


Stepford

by cereal



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-26
Updated: 2014-12-15
Packaged: 2017-12-30 13:21:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1019104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cereal/pseuds/cereal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Oh, come on, you know what I mean, that sort of thing is always happening on the telly. Take two attractive people, mix in a little tension, stick ‘em in a single bedroom for ratings, stir and repeat."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is another one for [my Trope Bingo card](http://trope-bingo.dreamwidth.org/1724.html?thread=30908), the Fake Relationship square. Its in two parts right now, but I might end up with three. Its also supposed to fulfill this weeks Then Theres Us challenge, but well see how that goes.

“You know, I always expected something like this to happen.” Rose is grinning, wide and toothy, as her voice bounces with laughter. “I just thought it’d be, well, _me_ , that got us into it.”

The last bit brings him up short. “Oh?”

Rose shrugs. “Yeah, one too many gossipy women on the Estate, an old school friend, a party, and – poof! – fake relationship. Just to keep a cover, you understand.”

He nods, oh, right, when she says it like that, of course – “Wait, _what_?”

She waves a hand dismissively in the air. “Oh, come on, you know what I mean, that sort of thing is always happening on the telly. Take two attractive people, mix in a little tension, stick ‘em in a single bedroom for ratings, stir and repeat.”

There’s a part of his brain that visualizes the sentence, every word spelled out in strong, straight font, and each part of it is lighting up in sequence, as he tries to figure out where to focus.

“Tension?” No, that’s not it, should’ve gone with – “You think I’m attractive?”

She does, he knows, but he’s felt a little off balance almost since they landed on this planet, and forcing her to admit it might unseat her a little bit, too.

Except Rose doesn’t even blink.

“You _are_ attractive,” she says, and her face screws up in confusion, as if he’s questioned the color of the sky (an Earth-y blue, on this planet) or whether or not he’s wearing shoes (Chuck Taylors, as ever).

“Right, ‘course I am,” he says, hustling to recover and straightening his tie. “Just didn’t realize you’d…noticed.”

She laughs at him outright this time, taking a few moments to fill the air with the light, bubbly sound of it before she finally shakes it off. “No, no,” she says, exaggerated. “I’m always just looking at your face because you’ve got food on it. Honestly, what are you like?”

As he looks at the queen-sized bed in front of them, and the pile of luggage at their feet, he’s beginning to question that himself, actually.

&&.

It had started well enough – smooth landing on a roll-the-dice location, sunny day, Rose Tyler by his side. All the ingredients for the sort of sweeping, dangerous adventure they specialize in.

Except, within a matter of minutes, they’d been surrounded by a gaggle of a women – women he recognized, and who apparently recognized him, even though it had to have been at least five faces since they’d seen him.

That damn blue box, giving him away every time.

“Welcome,” he’d said to Rose, trying to keep it under his breath, “To Stepford.”

Before she could respond, she’d been swept up, her ring-less left hand held up for public mockery and he’d rushed to cover for it.

“Oh, um, darling,” he said, fishing around in his coat pocket as the words knotted in his throat ( _Darling_?). “Forgot I picked up your ring from the jeweler’s.”

The women, Rose among them, had turned to look at him with interest, and come on, come on, there had to be _something_ that would work in his pocket.

There, just there, in the corner, that felt like – oh, one carat? Maybe a bit more? – and yes, that was it, the diamond ring he’d won in a claw game on Pixaria. He pulled it out, taking a split second to slip a bio-damper onto his own ring finger.

“Here you go,” he crowed, brandishing the ring, “All shining and perfect.” He scratched at the back of his neck with his free hand, trying to apologize with widened eyes. “Just like you.”

The ire of the women seemed to deflate as Rose reflexively extended her hand, fingers just the slightest bit sweaty – nerves, probably – and he slipped the ring on.

“Wouldn’t do to have people think we weren’t married,” he said loudly, “Especially when there are planets out there that’ll have you executed for that sort of thing.”

Rose’s eyes widened to match his own and she nodded imperceptibly, mouthing the word, “ _Executed_ ” as he forced a smile for the women.

“Hello, ladies,” he said. “Sorry to run, but I’ve just remembered we have dinner reservations. Anniversaries, you know how it goes.” He closed his hand around Rose’s, tugging her lightly toward the TARDIS as he backed up slowly.

“Now, now, Doctor,” the tallest of the women said. “You remember from last time – you _must_ let us show you some hospitality. Can’t just be running off, that would be _rude_. You’re not _rude_ are you, Doctor?”

He opened his mouth only to snap it shut as Rose’s heel connected with the toe of his trainers, “The Doctor? _Rude_?” Rose said, very, very loudly. “Never! I’m Rose Ty – I’m Rose. I’m the Doctor’s Rose. And you are?”

The taller woman’s eyes narrowed as she squared her shoulders, the crisp fabric of her button-up shirt stretching slightly with the movement. “I’m Cathy, and this is Christy, Catie, Carol, and Carina.”

Each of the women gave a polite smile as they were mentioned. The Doctor scrambled to identify unique qualities to help with name retention, but other than a few height differences, there was no uniqueness to be found. Slim, blonde, blue-eyed, it was just as he remembered, from back when he himself was blond and blue-eyed.

“We’re all so very pleased to meet you,” the women, minus Cathy, said in chorus, and the Doctor didn’t miss the small step Rose took backward. He tightened his grip on her hand in reassurance.

“Yep – _yes_ ,” Rose said. “I’m…so very pleased to meet you as well.”

Cathy pinched her lips into a tight smile. “I’m sure,” she said. “Come now, let’s get you settled. Catie, you can host them for the week.”

Catie, who he’d been almost sure was actually _Carol_ , nodded enthusiastically. “Of course!” She clapped her hands together. “I’ll just allow you a few minutes to gather your luggage, and then I’ll show you to your room. I think you’ll find it entirely pleasant. I’ve just redone the decor from a sky blue to a much more calming cerulean blue.”

Luggage! That’ll be it then, they can just pop into the TARDIS, pretend to pack, and he’d start the dematerialization sequence instead.

“Doctor,” Cathy said. “You can stay with us, I’m sure the other husbands would love to meet you, well, _again_. We’ll have some of the children help Rose with your things.”

Damn, so close.

Rose looked at him with only the slightest bit of anxiety in her expression, before nodding and turning for the TARDIS doors.

“Rose?” Cathy called. “Don’t forget to pack something…upscale. We’ll be visiting the theatre on Friday, it simply wouldn’t do to wear –” her eyes raked over Rose’s outfit as she sneered, “– _jeans_.”

Rose nodded and disappeared into the TARDIS. He gave the ship, and the separate bedrooms it contained, one final look before he was pulled away in the direction of a country club.

&&.

Turning back to him in their new, temporary bedroom, Rose’s eyes have cleared, her mouth setting in a line to create an expression he always associates with Rose getting down to business.

Well, a certain type of business, he amends, gaze darting quickly to and then away from the bed. He wouldn’t know about the expressions she makes for other types of business, try as he might to imagine them.

“All right,” she says, “What’s the plan? Free the men? Or, wait, is it the women? Who’s in trouble here, Doctor? I can’t really tell.”

He knocks his trainer against the luggage, wincing as it connects with a solid mass instead of the empty bag he’d been expected. What had she packed? Bricks?

“Um,” he clears his throat. “We are. We’re in trouble.”

She rolls her eyes. “I’d figured _that_ ,” she says. “But surely we’ll be saving someone else, alongside ourselves. That’s the way it goes, that’s what we do.”

That big, big bed and its frankly not-very-calming cerulean blue duvet seems to shimmer in front of him, a reminder that nothing about this particular trip is going to be “what they do.”

He steps determinedly around the luggage, perching himself on top of the desk instead of its accompanying chair, and he’s sure somewhere Catie just shuddered.

“Neither the men, nor the women, are prisoners here,” he says, scrubbing a hand across the back of his neck, as he swings his dangling legs back and forth. “It’s all very voluntary. About, oh, a couple hundred years after your time on Earth, there’s a movement that rebels against how free-wheeling the planet has become. They set out for here – reinstate a little order, get back to what they consider family values. They really do it call it Stepford, Rose. The negative connotations of that name got lost over time. They see it as idyllic.”

Rose is watching him carefully and he tries not to fidget under the scrutiny.

“What about executing single people? There’s got to be a problem with that.”

She’s got a sparkle in her eyes, that little hint of reckless adventure-lust that he’s done nothing but nurture.

“Well, yes, that’s a problem, only it doesn’t actually come up very often,” he says. “Stepford doesn’t receive many visitors, and the ones they do just pretend to be in love, or, well, married. Like we’re doing. Easily avoided, as executions go.”

She crosses the room, wheeling the desk chair out to sit before deliberately propping her feet up on the desk next to where he’s seated. Forget the shuddering, somewhere Catie is having full blown heart palpitations.

“Is that what you did last time you were here? Pretended?”

There’s a strategic casual air to her question that he notices immediately. They’re not too far from Sarah Jane and the knowledge he’s had other people to…pretend with.

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “I was here alone. They tried to pair me off – was blonde then, blue-eyed, too, and they wanted me to make little blonde-haired, blue-eyed babies with one of the older daughters. Didn’t want to hear a word about Gallifreyan genetics either. In the end, I told them I had several severe food allergies, nothing they wanted to pass on to their stock. They sent me off with a fruit basket and a handwritten note. Delicious apples, here in Stepford, we’ll have to see about getting some of those.”

The corners of Rose’s mouth turn down, processing what he’s said, and there’s more than a few things he hopes she doesn’t push at – Gallifreyan genetics, for one.

“Blonde-haired, blue-eyed women,” she finally says, dropping her feet back down to the ground. “Seems like the sort of place you wouldn’t mind staying for a while.” She meets his eye and the brown ringing her pupils has never been more apparent.

They’re not too far from Reinette either, he realizes that, as well.

He taps the toe of his trainer against her kneecap. “You’re wrong, you know. I _do_ mind. But we’re here for a week now, and at least the company I came with is good.”

He ducks his head so she can see his grin. They’d had it out about Madame de Pompadour already, and he’s doing his best to keep it that way – out and away.

She returns his smile and something loosens in his chest. “A week?”

He hops off the desk, “Well, six and a half days now. Any shorter and it’d seem like we don’t want to be here, any longer and we’d be overstaying our welcome. The unspoken rules of polite Stepford society.”

She rises to stand next to him as they survey the luggage, nudging his shoulder with her own. “And you do _so_ well with polite.”

He rocks sideways to return the motion with a laugh. “Height of courtesy, me. Come on, let’s get unpacked. Should almost be time for dinner.”

They work quickly, and he realizes that there’s an actual, proper bag for him as well. Spare button-ups and ties, boxer briefs and undershirts, socks – there’s even an extra pair of trainers.

Embarrassed, he shoves the pants into a drawer and piles the rest of the clothes on top of them.

“The TARDIS packed that for you,” Rose says, motioning at the empty suitcase as he tries to jam the drawer shut. “Just in case you were worried about me rooting around in your delicate underthings.”

“Oi! Hardly delicate,” he argues. “Quite manly and…flattering.”

Rose laughs, “I’m sure.”

He bristles at that, “Rose Tyler, just because you haven’t had occasion to see me in my pants doesn’t mean it’s any less spectacular.”

She grins and brushes his hands away from the overflowing drawer, smoothing the clothes down before sliding it shut. “It’s spectacular, is it?”

He sniffs, “Of course it is. You should know that, we _are_ married. We know all about each other in our underpants.”

Oh, no no no no, her face is far too amused, and this isn’t going to go well at all.

“Do we?” She grins around that damn tongue of hers. “Tell me – what sort of knickers do _I_ wear?”

He knows the answer, in fact, he’s known the answer for a long, long time, longer even than he’s had this body, low-riding jeans, and too-sheer skirts, but telling her so, admitting he’s noticed that sort of thing, well, it seems a bit dangerous.

Instead, he shrugs helplessly.

“That’s what I thought,” she crows, and turns back to unpacking her own suitcase.

“Patterns,” he blurts before he can stop himself.

“What?”

He focuses on the carpeting, the plush, pristine look of it. “Patterns,” he says again. “Your knickers have patterns. Flowers, stripes, polka dots, _animal_ print, honestly, Rose, most of the time your knickers are completely clashing with the rest of your outfit. Doesn’t that drive you mental?”

Rose’s cheeks go pink as her mouth opens and closes. What did he say that for? What did he even _think_ that for? Why, in point of fact, is he allowed to talk or think at all?

She’s staring at him now, clutching – oh god, she actually has knickers in her hand, striped things with lace edges, and they’re dangling from her fingertips over an open drawer.

Then, when he’s ready to apologize, or flee the room, or both, she laughs.

Loudly.

“Who matches their knickers to their outfit? Is that – oh! _You_ do!” She’s still laughing, fully belly laughs that shake her whole body. “What’s it like? Blue tie, blue pants? Or more intricate than that? Haven’t got yourself swirly boxer briefs, do you?”

She drops her knickers and darts for the drawer containing his clothes, but he slams a hand out to keep it shut.

“It’s the first thing,” he says, begrudgingly. “The blue thing.”

She rocks back on her heels, squinting at the trousers he’s wearing, like she might be able to see what’s underneath.

“And you, _dear_ , find it completely adorable,” he adds. “In case anyone asks.”

Hmph. There, not so funny now. Fake marriage and fake feelings on his decidedly un-fake underpants.

She stops laughing abruptly. “Will they?”

“Will they what?”

She nods at his trousers, presumably referencing his matching pants. “Will they ask that sort of thing?”

He tugs at his ear. It hadn’t really occurred to him, outside of winning this little conversation, but they might. There are all sorts of things he doesn’t know about Rose, that her…husband would.

“Well, I don’t think pants are acceptable for polite conversation, but you’re right. They will expect us to know certain things. Maybe we better get our stories straight.”

Rose nods. “Right, right, let me just –” She dumps the rest of her clothes into the drawers, shuffling them haphazardly before sitting down on the bed.

“All ready, I’m ready,” she says, arranging herself primly. “Dating the Doctor 101, let’s begin.”

He sits down next to her. They’re both perched right at the foot of the bed, and he’s hyper-aware of the space that is, and isn’t, between them.

“Well, first, it’s not dating, it’s marriage,” he says, plucking at a imaginary loose thread on the duvet. There’s not a thing out of place in the entire room, save the stuff they brought in with them, but she allows the gesture, her own hands scratching at the material of her jeans. “But you’re right, we should start with dating. First date –”

“Chips!” They say it in unison, and maybe this won’t be as hard as he thought. If they stick close to the truth, there won’t be too many lies to keep track of.

“Put that one down for favorite food, too,” Rose says, and he nods.

“Worst date?” He looks at her curiously, eyebrows raised in what he hopes is a nonthreatening way.

She tilts her head, “Well, there was that one time I thought you stood me up on Christmas.”

He opens his mouth in shock, “Rose Tyler! _You_ stood _me_ up!”

“Only because I thought the date was with a different man!”

The wince that crosses his face is brief, but she catches it anyway.

“I know now, though,” she says gently. “Same man.”

Flexing his toes inside his trainers, he turns to look at her more fully. “Sorry I didn’t tell you that…plans could change like that.”

She reaches out to cover the hand still resting on the bed with her own. “I know. And I’m sorry I asked if we could go back to the old…plans.”

He nods and twists his wrist, so that his palm is face up and beneath hers before squeezing her hand lightly.

“What other things should we know about each other?” she asks. “First kiss?”

“The TARDIS,” he says, at the same time she says, “New Earth.”

“The TARDIS? We’ve never kissed in the TARDIS.” Her voice is genuinely curious, and that answers a question he’s had for months now – whether she remembers.

“No, no, you’re right,” and he tries to ignore any sadness in his own voice. It’s better if she doesn’t remember. He doesn’t exactly know why, but it’s better. “Just thought that would be easy to remember. I’d forgotten all about New Earth.”

He hasn’t forgotten though, not even a little.

“Wish I could forget,” she says. “Bloody embarrassing, that was.”

He twines their fingers together, dancing his fingertips over the backs of her knuckles.

“Aw, I don’t know,” he says. “Was sort of nice.”

She snatches her hand away to swat at his shoulder. “Nice? That was awful! I don’t – Doctor, if you need to know, you know, for Stepford, I don’t kiss like that. All forceful and without any…”

Catching her hand as it retreats from his shoulder, he can’t stop himself from asking, “Without any what?”

She fixes him with a hard look, like she’s trying to figure out if he’s baiting her, and he is, just a little bit, but there are so many ways that sentence could end.

Without any finesse, without any passion, without any –

“Tongue,” she says. “Without any tongue.”

Well, that was unexpected. Is it hot in the room? It’s hot in the room. And fast, everything in the room is fast now. And a little zoomed in. A very zoomed in, hot, fast room, that’s where they are now.

He can’t help himself from asking this time either. “ _Tongue_?”

She nods and then collapses suddenly back on to the bed. Her hand is pulled from his and her voice is muffled by the way she turns her face into the duvet, like she’s trying to wipe off any embarrassment, or the entire conversation.

“Tongue,” she confirms, turning her head to peer at him where he’s still sitting up. “You don’t kiss like that?”

There’s blood and hormones and energy pounding in his ears, everything tumbling together, Rose Tyler’s pink little tongue wrapping around his own in his mind’s eye.

“Well, um,” he says, and can she even hear him? Can she hear anything that isn’t his body responding inappropriately, fizzing little sparks of light sloshing in his veins and pooling in his groin. “I – well. Kissing is actually a…in ancient times…did you know that whales…sometimes picnic ants…”

Rose’s embarrassment has been swept away, replaced with clear eyes and a teasing smile as he digs himself deeper.

“You know, Doctor,” she says. “Shireen used to have this little poem – a peach is a peach, a plum is a plum, but a kiss ain’t a kiss, without some tongue.”

It’s a smug little grin she’s wearing now, that blasted tongue poking out from the side and apparently reveling in his unease.

“That’s not a very factual poem,” he manages. “On Smuckers V, a plum is actually an orange, and an orange is actually drywall.”

Rose’s eyebrows raise, a mocking dance up her forehead, and then she’s rolling her head back and forth on the duvet, “Oh, god, _you_!” she says, and it sounds exasperated. “Do you ever do _anything_ normally?”

There’s a fork in the road, he can see it as clear as day, a quick brush-off and a speech on the mundanities of “normal,” or a much more interesting path – one full of pink and yellow and wet, human heat.

He shifts over her body, twisting at the waist so he cages her in, torso above hers and hands on either side of her head on the mattress.

“Apparently, Rose Tyler,” he says, pleased at the way she’s gone completely still beneath him, “I _kiss_ normally.”

Her lips part, little puffs of breath that he’s just an inch too far away to feel escaping between them.

“Do you?” Her voice is all wrapped up in so many layers, and the top one looks like hope. Breathy, warm hope.

He nods and dips his head closer to hers. It would be weird, suddenly being perched over Rose, ready to – well, ready to kiss her – except he’s always ready to kiss her. There’s a perpetual state of pre-kiss air between them, always hanging around, making things oppressive and exciting and giddy.

That moment right before the drop on a roller coaster, the nervous tingle of knowing what’s coming, but being unable to predict the exact moment it’ll arrive, they flourish in that moment, they thrive and pulse and live.

“I do,” he says.

Her tongue darts out to wet her lips, deliberate and co-signed by the challenge in her eyes. There’s a few strands of her hair out of place, and he shifts his weight more fully onto his left hand, so that he can brush them away with his right.

There’s always so much wanting between them, along with the anticipating, he wants and wants and wants, but it’s the getting that keeps holding him back. He’s completely terrified of the getting, the getting and the having and the eventual losing.

It’s enough to make him shift backward, those same routine fears, things he’s felt for hundreds of years made that much more vivid by the spicy-sweet smell of Rose underneath him.

She looks disappointed, her face falling as he scoots back from her, moving to raise up off his other hand, too, and back away.

Run away.

“I don’t believe you,” she says suddenly.

“What?” He stops mid-motion, hands poised in the air over her shoulders.

“I don’t believe you that you kiss like that.”

Something tightens in his chest, recognition of a cheap gambit and how desperately he wants to fall for it.

“No?” He moves forward again as he says it, fingers settling back into the fabric of the duvet, more of her hair trapped between skin and cotton. Everything is so soft, _she_ is so soft, and he’s suddenly tired of all the rough edges that brick in his existence.

“Not even a little bit,” she says. “I think you’re lying.”

He nudges her nose with his own. “Not lying.”

Her chin tilts up, bringing their lips close enough that he’d count it, really he would, on some universal score card, kiss totals for the Doctor, increased by one. But he can do better, he can do so much better.

“Prove it,” she says, and he presses his mouth to hers.

It’s supposed to be about his tongue, some distant, small part of his brain remembers, but the rest of him, the bits that are less prone to pedantic nit-picking, those bits want to take their time getting there.

And so he starts slow, mouth still pressed gently to hers, he shifts, moving experimentally a few times, angling to grasp her bottom lip between his own, and there – there’s the return of pressure he was waiting for. Rose’s head lifts, tilts, soft, warm lips advancing and retreating, and everything narrowed down and everything blown wide.

She tastes like lip balm and salt, and the information is being passed back to his taste buds, a series of hand-offs, molecules and air, and he wants to experience it firsthand, wants it exploding across his tongue, wet and warm and agile, and he opens his mouth against hers.

There’s a split second, a brief flash of infinity, the top of the roller coaster, tongues in their own mouths and braced for impact, and then he’s pushing forward, body leaning into hers as his tongue slips by twin sets of lips to twine with her own.

It’s too much all at once, and he stutters, mouth stilling above hers almost before he’s started. He’s poised above her, with his tongue in her mouth, and he’s not moving at all, completely frozen, something like terror and something like freedom seizing every inch of his skin.

Her own movements, her momentum, rhythms and routines and well-worn grooves, everything is knocked out of step as she recognizes he’s stopped, and then she’s grinning against his mouth, around both of their tongues. A wide, awkward thing that stretches her lips and brings the tops of her teeth against his tongue.

Fitting her hands into his hair, she scrapes her nails across his scalp, before lifting him away slightly, pulling their mouths apart, but not entirely.

“Keep going,” she mumbles against him, and it’s muffled, and it’s wet, but he understands, and he nods before closing the small distance again.

Humans and their kissing, and it really is very, very messy, and, oh god, oh fuck, it’s completely brilliant, the way it’s about so much more than what their mouths are doing. 

Her hands are still in his hair, grasping and tugging and pulling, and he doesn’t know, can’t possibly be expected to be aware of his own appendages, should hardly be responsible for the way he’s shifted, dropping to his elbows above her and fitting his arms underneath hers, so that he can slip them between her back and the bed, his hands clutching to curl around her shoulders.

It’s an amazing anchor point, pulling her up and pressing her down, mouths shifting with each movement, pulling back only to return, and he is _licking_ , he is basically _licking_ Rose Tyler’s _tongue_.

In a movement full of clumsy grace, she maneuvers to tangle their legs, so that his thigh is trapped between her own and he’s about two seconds from getting hard, two seconds from pressing down into her, two seconds from the seam on her jeans and the friction of his zip and fuck, fuck, fuck, there it is, his erection, rising, hardening, and kissing and rutting and low, breathy moans.

Her legs twist around his, bringing him closer, before she’s kicking out, wiggling, until his hips are bracketed by her thighs, soft, fleshy, perfect little parentheses and he wants to hear every aside Rose Tyler ever makes.

His feet are dangling off the bed, no purchase to be found as he scrambles to press closer to her, and then she’s shimmying up the duvet, the rough slide of his-and-hers cotton flooding every atom with friction and need.

There’s a sharp, rapid sound, and it’s fuzzy and stumbling as he pulls away and tries to place it. Rose beneath him, mouth wet and eyes glazed and no, it hasn’t come from her. His eyes find the headboard and he bucks his hips hard, but it doesn’t move, no meeting of wood on wall, just the sexiest fucking noise he’s ever heard in his life escaping from Rose’s mouth.

The harsher noise sounds again, a burst of cacophany in a room full of labored breathing, and they both recognize it at the same time –

It’s the door.

“Dinner’s ready!” Catie’s voice echoes into room, smothering them, and he shifts off of Rose with a sigh of regret.

“Coming,” he growls, the words loud and rough.

“Would have done,” Rose says, her voice is low, and it takes only a second for him to catch on, to meet her eyes with a delighted look and nod as enthusiastically as possible.

He swings his legs off the side of the bed and stands, turning to pull Rose into a sitting position and watching as she finds her footing on the floor as well.

They shuffle across the room, navigating the empty luggage and straightening their clothes and hair. As he reaches for the door handle, Rose stops him with a hand on his shoulder. He turns to look at her, and something in his chest flips at the sight of her, pink cheeks, red mouth, her shirt hopelessly wrinkled.

“Save room for dessert,” she tells him.

And of course he will, it’d be rude not to.


	2. Chapter 2

He should've expected that there would be a proper dessert prepared. Apple pie and ice cream after four other courses, and he's so full that he spares a thought for whatever fumbling evolution gave him a second heart and not a second stomach.  

Stomachs are harder to break anyway, and as he follows Rose back up the stairs to the guest room, he wonders at the fragility of the organ he _does_ have in duplicate. 

It had been easy conversation at the table, but then, they've always been good at easy conversation, even when the subject matter is a series of increasingly outlandish lies about their brand new (but years old) romantic relationship. 

He was delighted to learn that Rose apparently proposed to _him_ , and not just for the way it seemed to scandalize Catie and her family. There was thought behind it, the proposal story, a picnic of chips on a field of apple grass, and a Dickens novel, carved out to hold the ring.

It smacked of sentiment and feeling, and of course he had to reciprocate with a made up surprise birthday party that featured a Spice Girls reunion and a sundae bar. He'd even let her have the last banana for her banana split. 

(Frankly, the banana thing was getting a little out of control, but he hoped she understood the symbolism, because it wasn't about fruit.)

But now, with a long, long list of pretend milestones for their pretend marriage established, they were walking down a hallway to cross a real boundary, in their real relationship. 

Or, well, he thought they were. 

 _Hoped_ they were. 

It wasn't entirely clear, but she was holding his hand, and leading him toward a bedroom, and there was something to be said for taking things at face value. 

The door to the room was open, lamps shining brightly from bedside tables on either side, and the duvet turned down invitingly. Catie must have done it while they were finishing up at the table, and he's surprised by the lack of mints on their pillows. Not that he had room left for even a mint, but, well, Rose might appreciate it if his breath smelled nice. 

For...whatever it is they were going to do. 

It's early enough yet that they could go out exploring, except "exploring" in Stepford is a high regulated affair -- nightly scheduled events that funnel in the entire community. Tonight's was a series of youth football games, and they'd taken a pass. 

He had high hopes for tomorrow night's movie under the stars, though. The parks here were beautifully manicured, the perfect place to spread out a blanket and let his hands do a little wandering, under the premise of watching some innocuous film. 

Maybe he could get her to wear a skirt. 

Maybe a blouse, too -- a tidy, little row of buttons for him to undo one at a time. 

Or maybe he should focus on something else, because they'd been in the room for a full minute now, and she'd yet to even say anything, let alone launch herself at him. 

Instead, she had dropped his hand and was rooting around in the dresser, making soft, frustrated noises. 

"Rose? Are you sure you didn't want to go to the football games?"

He'd sort of just presumed actually, when he'd begged off Catie's invitation to watch her son Caleb's match, but Rose may have wanted to get out of the house. 

She shakes her head. "No, I'm good, thanks."

Right, right, she's good, bloody wealth of information in that sentence. Just ever so much to go on. 

For a bloke that barely ever took the time to make _first_ guesses, he was doing an awful lot of second guessing. And her! Hardly looks bothered at all! 

The absolute cheek.

"Thought it'd be nice to just stay in," she says, her voice interrupting second guesses three, four, and five. "Maybe watch some telly?"

"You want to stay in?"

And, oh, wasn't that helpful, the way he just repeated what she'd said? Suave as Casanova, this Time Lord right here. 

"Yeah," she says, slamming a drawer shut, still empty-handed. "Big day tomorrow -- think you're meant to play golf and I'm meant to shop. We ought to vacation before the vacation. Rest up."

"Right," he agrees, but it's lost to the clatter of her unzipping one of the suitcases. "Are you looking for something?"

The suitcase is empty and she slams the lid of it shut. "Pajamas," she says. "I think I forgot to pack them."

Oh. 

She wheels on him, almost like she can hear the train of thought he's thinking about boarding. 

"What did _you_ bring for pajamas? Did the TARDIS pack you anything?"

He mentally flips through the contents of his suitcase. There might have been a pair of cotton bottoms in there. 

"Um. Just the bottoms, I think."

She squints, thinking it over, before shaking her head. "No, that's no good, they'll be too long." 

Her gaze drifts around the room, apparently looking for options, and he has a sudden image of Rose Tyler making sexy pajamas out of the curtains, like some sort of lurid reinterpretation of The Sound of Music. The Captain, The Doctor, it's all the same, and he'll make her sing on the stairwell, by bending her right over the railing. 

Her eyes find him again and she tilts her head, "Have you got an undershirt on?" 

He looks down, checking, as if he isn't _always_ wearing an undershirt, always relying on millimeters of fabric to hold in his tenuous self-control. 

"Yeah," he says. 

"Perfect," she chirps. "That'll do. Hand it over, please."

"What?"

She smiles, crossing the room toward him with her hand extended, "Come on, give it to us, I'll just wear that."

He's not -- this isn't -- she doesn't want him to --

"I'm sure I have a clean one you can wear," he manages. "I know I do, actually. All folded up in that drawer. Well," he tugs on his ear, " _Wadded_ up, but still clean and…and…unoccupied."

She rolls her eyes, but the impish little grin she's wearing unnerves him more. 

"But then _that_ one will be dirty," she says. "No use dirtying a shirt for bed."

It's not that he doesn't want to see Rose Tyler all wrapped in the shirt he wore today, the one that's spent the day pressed against his skin -- it's that he _does_. He wants to see it more than he wants to see the sexy Sound of Music, more than he wants to see --

" _Doctor_?" 

And her grin now, it's killing him, he'll regenerate any second, right here, in the middle of Stepford, before he even takes her to bed. 

"May I have your shirt, please?" She's practically batting her eyelashes, laying it on extra thick, and he's lapping every single bit up. "I wanna get settled," she says and tilts her head toward the bed. 

It's a kind of progress, a type of it, him undressing in front of Rose, and he relents with a sigh. 

"Fine," he says, and strips off his jacket, before loosening his tie and pulling it over his head. His fingers are working at the buttons of his Oxford when he's struck with an idea. 

"Do you want to wear this instead?" he asks, plucking at the blue cloth.

"No!" That was loud, why was that so loud? 

And why does she look embarrassed?

"I mean, no, that's all right," she tries again, softer this time. "Rather not have the, uh, buttons. Dig right into you while you're sleeping, those will."

That doesn't make any sense, and he desperately wants the real reason, because her eyes keep darting to his chest, lingering on his fingers as he slips each button free, and it's gonna be good, that real reason, he can _feel_ it. 

"I've seen your pajamas, Rose," he says, eyebrows raising. "A lot of them have buttons. What is it really?"

She narrows her eyes at him, sticking her tongue out and scrunching her nose. 

"Fine," she says. "It's because if I wear that one, you'll just keep your undershirt on."

Well, yes, he would, but why is that --

"Rose Tyler! Are you trying to get me topless?"

The way she ducks her head couldn't be more clear and he beams at her. 

"You are! Oh, that was _very_ cunning, I'm impressed! And I have to tell you -- I have those same motivations where you're concerned."

He tries to keep his tone reassuring, but can't hold back the smug sound of it.

"The topless motivations," he clarifies. "Not the cunning ones. Although, there's a word that sounds like that -- well, _starts_ like that, and I have those motivations where you're concerned, too."

Then, in a completely innocent, wholly lewd manner, he licks his lips.

Rose's eyes widen, and he watches as twin patches of red bloom on her cheeks. "I'll -- I'll remember that," she says.

He smiles brightly at her. "Please do!" 

Quickly unbuttoning the rest of his shirt, he shrugs out of it and dangles it in front of her by his fingertips. She waves him off, tipping her head to gesture pointedly at his undershirt instead, and his face is starting to hurt from all the smiling. 

The big fears, the things holding him back from being like this with her before, they're things like mortality, and the cruelty of the universe, and how he's never going to be able to keep her completely safe. But peppered in among those fears, little dots of anguished dressing, was the worry that it would change what they had. That he'd lose his best friend for a shag.

He's starting to see that what is actually going to happen is a shag _with_ his best friend. They're only adding to the relationship, not taking anything away. 

With him still lost in thought, Rose crosses closer to him, fingers grasping the bottom of his t-shirt in a way that makes him start, his body shuddering briefly as he drops the button-up to the ground.

"I think this is mine," she says, and, oh, look what he's done now, he's completely given up control.

Gosh, darn it. 

Oh well, he'll just have to soldier on. It's going to be taxing, Rose in command and undressing him, but he'll live. He'll find a way to cope. 

She's pushing his t-shirt up his chest, self-assured and smiling softly. When she gets to his armpits with the material, he crosses his arms and reaches down to grab the hem, before tugging it over his head.

"Yours, as requested," he says, looping the t-shirt around her waist to tug her even closer and trap her against him. Her hands find his shoulders, his bare shoulders, Rose touching his _shoulders_ , and, oh good, the room is sweltering again. 

She presses a kiss to the skin of his chest, right between his hearts. He's got a little bit of hair there, enough hair, a manly amount of hair, and she nuzzles it with her nose before pushing back and grabbing the t-shirt from him. 

There's a flutter in his stomach, like his blood can't decide which way to go -- up to preserve the spot she's just touched with her mouth, or down, to a place he _wants_ her to touch with her mouth. 

She takes a step back and drops his shirt to the floor, before turning away from him and stripping off her own shirt in one clean movement. 

He loses the battle, and the blood rushes south.

"You know, when I said I wanted to get you topless, I meant I wanted to _see_ you topless."

She turns to look at him over her bare shoulder, reaching around with the opposite hand to unclasp her bra, before shimmying it down her arms. 

"You _are_ seeing me topless," she tells him, voice infuriatingly innocent. "I'm not wearing a top, and you're looking at me."

God, is he ever. There are planets, a whole slew of them in an infinite universe, where the ground is smooth and soft and peachy, and he imagines Rose like that, the expanse of her back, the curve of her spine, an undiscovered world for him to explore. Freckles and scars and dips and detours, and he's going to claim all of it for himself, he's going to build a new life there. 

Still, though, not _exactly_ what he'd meant, and he rocks back on his heels, making a show of craning his head, trying to look around the cover her stance provides. She grins and drops her bra to the floor, reaching to pick up his discarded shirt while still keeping an arm pressed across her chest.

"You're right," he says. "I should've clarified even further. I wanted to see your _breasts_ when you were topless. It's _vital_ that I see your breasts, in fact. I might die. Or worse."

She tugs the shirt on and there's a give like disappointment, and a give like excitement, in his abdomen.

"Worse than death?" She turns around as she says it, hands on her hips and mocking him. 

"Regeneration," he says solemnly. "And with that on the brain, Rose, you have to know -- there's a real risk that I could regenerate into a giant boob."

She laughs, sharp and clear, "You're already a giant boob. Now take your trousers off."

He salutes and moves his fingers to the button at his fly, not even bothering to hide the way he's staring at her. His undershirts are thin and white and Rose's nipples are hard and pink, and together they make the sort of picture he'd hang above the mantle, or the time rotor. 

She unbuttons her jeans, and they both spend a few moments stripping off shoes and socks, before raising their hands back to their waistbands at the same time. 

He hooks his thumbs into the fabric there and she does the same with her jeans. It's not her breasts he's focused on anymore (though he can see them there, round and lovely, in the periphery), it's her eyes. 

Heavy lidded and intent, she's looking at him the same way he must be looking at her, and he wants to do something ridiculous -- applaud, high five her, thrust his fists triumphantly into the air, because look at them, look at where they are and look what they're doing, and look at the universe, still intact. 

Instead he takes his trousers off as fast as he possibly can. 

Rose grins at him, the blue boxer briefs he'd mentioned earlier tented by the way he's half-hard and working towards a goal. 

She grips the two sides of her fly and peels them down, revealing -- oh, _oh_ , her knickers are blue, too. Blue and speckled with white stars and he is going to spend an hour, several hours, checking those for constellation accuracy. 

She moves to the edge of the bed, sitting down so she can grasp the hem of her jeans and slip it over her foot. It looks like a job he can help with, he's always been a helpful sort, and he rushes to it. 

Squatting in front of the bed, he maneuvers the jeans from her legs and she pushes herself up to strip them all the way off.

Rose Tyler, in star-spangled knickers and his undershirt, on a bed. 

Whatever planet this is a reward for, whatever he's done to deserve this, he's going back to do it again and again. 

She scoots up the bed, shifting the pillows behind her so she can lean against them, and then he's standing and following her path to crawl up the duvet. 

There's a moment where he's leaning over her, where every nerve in his body is begging to fire off, if only he'd just drop down to meet her, and it's that same addictive precipice they're always on. 

With his mind to how much sweeter the payoff will be if he just drags this out a little bit longer, he collapses onto the pillows next to her, twisting so that they're both facing forward as she grabs for the television remote. 

She turns the television on and he wraps an arm around her shoulders. It's only the space of a few channel changes before she nuzzles into his chest, her cheek over his left heart. 

"This is why I wanted your shirt off," she says. "You smell good." She turns her nose further into him, muffling her voice. 

"And," she plucks at the fabric of the t-shirt she's wearing, "This smells good."

He chuckles, pressing a kiss to her hair. "You smell good, too."

The show she'd landed on, some chat program, continues on the telly, but he's not paying attention in the slightest, not with a severely underdressed companion cuddled up next to him. 

There's more to be done though, more he wants to do, and without any time to talk himself out of it, he slips his foot under her calf, tangling their legs. 

She hitches her leg a little higher, skin brushing skin, smooth and soft meeting hairy and bony. 

"You didn't put your pajama bottoms on," she says. "It's nice, all this skin."

He hums in agreement and they spend a few minutes pretending to watch the telly. There's something in the air, faint but still discernible, and when the hand nearest him finds his thigh, scratching lightly, he places it.

Arousal. 

This is the smell of Rose Tyler's arousal, and it's enough to bring his erection back, a slow, twitching build, until he's fully hard just inches from her hand. 

It doesn't feel particularly urgent though, and he doesn't want to unhinge this relaxed, comfortable space they've reached by drawing attention to it. He's content to sit with her, both of them practically thrumming with need, as her fingers dance higher and higher on his legs. 

It's in her field of vision though, his erection, he knows it, can tell the angle she's watching the telly at, and calculate the periphery capabilities of the human eye almost reflexively. It's useful in near death situations, knowing just the right height to signal a subtle _run_! gesture to communicate with Rose, but not this week's villain. 

Somehow, for this minute at least, that seems like enough, his anatomy has something it'd like to do with Rose, and they both know it. 

But what she's doing to his thigh, -- and oh, under the leg of his pants now, nails slipping by the bottom hem, the fabric that usually clings to his skin pulled away by familiar fingertips -- it feels nice, it feels _brilliant_ , in fact, and he ought to reciprocate. 

He shifts the hand that had been resting on her shoulder, fingers dropping down to brush her sleeve, before curling back up to tug lightly at the neck of her shirt. He slips his fingertips under the elastic there, lightly tracking her collarbone, dipping into the hollow at the base of her throat. 

It's awkward, bending his wrist like that, and he lets his hand fall slack, the tips of his fingers brushing the top of her breast. He readjusts his arm, giving himself more room, and now he's able to ring his thumb around her nipple, hard beneath her t-shirt before he even reaches it. 

She arches her back slightly, pushing up into his hand as her fingers go still on his leg. There's only the soft sounds of their breathing, the low chatter from the television that they're both still staring at, and there, echoing in his skull, the deep, rapid beat of his hearts. 

He feels her head shifting against his chest and looks down at the same time she's looking up. In one swift movement, his hand retreats, arm moving to slip between her back and the pillow and using it for leverage to turn her more fully into him. 

Limbs rearrange, her legs straddling his hips, and her weight against him, on top of him, as she cups his cheeks with her hands. Her back is to the television now, eyes focused as she lets her fingers map out the contours of his face. Her index finger traces down the length of his nose, tapping lightly at the tip of it. 

"You _are_ attractive," she says. "I meant it."

He winks at her. "You're not too bad yourself," he says, his hands settling on her waist beneath her t-shirt. 

She demurs, mouthing turning down as her nose crinkles. 

"No, really, Rose, you are completely..." 

His brain flips through words -- pretty, lovely, beautiful, gorgeous -- each one discarded as he fumbles to find something better. 

"Completely what?" she says, rocking back to place her weight more fully on his thighs, and it's perfect, his lap as a spot for her bum, he's going to start pursuing situations where he himself is the only seating option. 

"You're completely _everything_ , Rose. A language full of words, unending languages full of words, and you are all of them, you're the key, the structure, the vocabulary, the entire boundaries of my existence, they're defined by you."

She grins at him, bright and wide and full of so much joy. 

"If you're trying to get into my trousers, I'd like to point out that they're off," she says. 

"They are, aren't they? How convenient." 

He uses the hands on her waist to shift her closer again, until she's settled against his erection, just two thin, flimsy layers of cotton that do nothing to mitigate the heat of her. 

His hands slip by her hips, moving so he can edge his thumbs under the waistband of her knickers. 

"Not knickerless, though," he says. "Which is a shame -- I bet you look brilliant knickerless."

She reaches between them to scratch against the skin of his stomach, nails tracing at the faintly defined abdominal muscles that came standard with this body. Maybe he should see about toning those up a bit more, maybe Rose would like it. 

"Do you want to find out?" Her voice is coy, teasing, like his cock isn't answering that question for him just a breath away from her hand. 

"Do I want to find out what you look like knickerless? Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I think I do. Is that going to happen?"

She grins at him and then shifts up, swinging her leg over him to scoot to the edge of the bed and drop her feet to the floor. 

With a deep breath that he tracks in the movements of her back, she stands and turns to face him. 

"You're sure?" she asks, but her fingers are already in her waistband. He recognizes the out though, appreciates the opportunity to take it, and it only reinforces whatever decision they've made today -- that they've got each other's best interests at heart. 

"Oh, Rose, I am very, _very_ sure."

She nods, and with another deep breath, she tugs her knickers down until she can shift them off with her legs and step out of them. 

His damn undershirt falls right back down though, covering her to her upper thighs and he almost growls in frustration. 

She glances down, noticing what's happened, and gives him a cheeky smile and a shrug. 

"I tried," she says. 

He's so fucking hard now that it's distracting, he's gone from calm and relaxed by the eventualities of the evening to manic and filled with frustration and need that they haven't arrived yet. 

"Try _harder_ ," he grits out, and he tries for a smile, but he's sure it's impatient, something to be used by a predator on prey. 

Her own smile is lighter, teasing. "Are you sure?" She kneels on the bed next to his thighs, fingers walking the seams of his pants. "Are you _sure_ you want to make things _harder_?"

He bucks up into her hand, swerving sideways in the motion, trying to get her hand where he wants it.

"Because, Doctor," she says, and her palm connects, delicate and warm, cupping him, "Things are already pretty hard."

His hand snaps to cover hers, pressing down, pressure to relieve pressure, and he lets out a groaning breath before releasing her. 

He slams his eyes shut briefly, trying to work out words, before he's springing them back open to look at her, his expression tense and pleading. "Rose, take your shirt off."

And, oh, that was a bit too commanding, wasn't it? Sounded like an order, that did. 

Rose doesn't look angry though, she looks…intrigued?

"Doctor, take your pants off," she says, matching his hard tone. 

Yes, all right, definitely, he'll take his pants off, and he's squirming on the duvet, trying to gain a hold on fabric that has become the consistency of oil. What does he even bother wearing pants for anyway? If he's not got his trousers on, surely he's in a position where he doesn't want to be wearing pants either and why are they so bloody _difficult_ to take off?

Rose is nearly laughing at him, eyebrows raised, as he finally gets purchase on his waistband, but no, that can't be the end of it, of course not, he's still got to figure out how to work the fucking things past his erection. Pulling the elastic away from his skin as far as it'll go, he shoves them over his cock in one swift movement, shimmying to work the rest of the pants out from under his arse. A quick bit of sitting up to get them farther down, a second of fancy leg work, and there -- pants off.

"Your turn!"

In any other context, the ease with which Rose completes a task that caused him a tremendous amount of distress would be infuriating, but since the task in question is finally being naked, he's happy to say he's not ruffled at all when she gets her shirt off with a minimum of hassle. 

Naked. He is _naked_ , with _Rose_. These revelations are never going to stop, he can tell. Inside of her, making her come, making her come for the 49th time weeks from now, it's all going to be just as brilliant.

Her gaze keeps skipping across his body, the frequency with which it lands on his cock ever-increasing. 

"You can look," he tells her. "I'm certainly looking." He lets his eyes wander deliberately over her body where's still kneeling next to him. Her breasts and her stomach and her skin and her hair and what has he been doing, showing her all these planets, when she could've been showing him _this_?

She finally settles, taking in the length of him, and her hand reaches to follow the same path, until she's got it wrapped his erection and he feels like a balloon inflated just a breath too much.

"It's, like…human," she says, fingers tightening and relaxing, up and down, up and down. He tenses deliberately, making his cock jump in her hand and grinning at the way she startles.

"It's, like, Time Lord," he says, parroting her tone, but she swipes her thumb across the tip of him at the same time, and he backtracks. "But you can call it whatever you want, if you promise to keep that up."

She does, firm, solid strokes, that have him arching his hips to meet her until his own hands can't stay still any longer. They should never have been still in the first place he decides, as he lifts the one closest to her to cup one of her breasts.

He massages it gently, thumb and index finger meeting to give her nipple a cheeky acknowledging pinch before he's reaching to do the same to the other breast. Rose's hand has stilled on his cock, and she tilts her head down to watch the movement of his fingers, painting loops and swirls across her chest before trailing down to do the same on her stomach.

"Are you having fun?" She sounds like she is, an amused lilt to her voice as he scrapes lower on belly, fingers dancing across hair as he skims even lower. 

"I am," he confirms. "But let me just --"

Sitting up, he maneuvers her by the waist until she's lying on her back on the duvet, and he's settled between her legs.

"There! That's even more fun, don't you think?" He punctuates it with a buck of his hips. The angles are all wrong, but it's still thoroughly fantastic, the heat he plans to bury himself in shimmering just out of reach. 

He pushes up on his hands to meet her eye and there's her mouth, all pink and full and perfect, and, oh god, he hasn't even kissed her properly since all this began. 

Well, that's set to rights easily enough, and he drops to press his mouth to hers. There's no build up this time, no dancing around the whole tongue issue, just tongues, right into doing the dancing themselves. She strokes hers against his, a tumble of wetness and warmth. 

She's naked though, and that's distracting, all that skin of hers pressed up against skin of his, and with a few more moments of tongues and teeth and lips, he pulls back, kissing from her jaw to her neck before latching onto to where it meets her shoulder. It could be sucking, or it could be biting, but what it definitely is is _marking_ , a firm, solid suction to leave a bruise that'll scandalize the neighborhood. 

She's squirming beneath him, legs wrapping and unwrapping from his hips, and she ought to be rewarded for that, for what that squirming is doing to him. 

Releasing her neck, pleased with the wet noise his mouth makes and the breathy noise she lets loose from her own, he continues down her body. There are nipples to be kissed, perfect, lovely things that he's going to find time to write an opera for later, but there's still undiscovered territory to be had, and he moves down her body, settling his torso between her knees.

It's overwhelming in this position, the way she smells and the way she looks, and the soft panting she's doing from her spot on the pillows. 

He traces a finger from her belly button down, until he's ringing her clit, and her panting has turned decidedly needy. He needs, too, needs so many things, and with a quick press of his cock into the mattress, he slides his finger down and inside of her, stroking in and out in a slow rhythm before adding a second one and repeating the motions, thumb circling her clit. 

Her back arches up off the bed, and every part of him vies to be the most pleased -- his ego, his pride, his fucking lucky fingers, all of it taking credit for Rose's reactions beneath him.

Those fingers though, he doesn't need those fingers, he can do it with his _mouth_ , get more of those reactions, get an even bigger one, he's certain of it.

He moves his hand back, Rose protesting softly above him, before he's pressing his mouth to her, a solid, slow lick with no clear beginning or end. He's going to get lost here, in the way she tastes, the way she groans when his tongue flicks against her clit, the way she swears under her breath when he slips it inside of her. 

It's several long moments, learning what she likes, the speed, the pressure, everything wet and hot and his tongue taking it all in, bathing in it. His fingers are itching to help, and he's about to relent, when Rose pants out a series of words above him.

"I knew I liked that tongue," she says. "Fuck, _fuck_ , god, that is -- _fuck_."

He grins against her, and there's no way he's getting his fingers involved now, it's a point of pride, between him and his tongue and their nonexistent god. He sets a steady rhythm stroking his tongue inside of her, and she's making these amazing noises that come off as vaguely pleading. He pulls back to touch his tongue to her clit again, a rapid pulse, and oh, oh, oh, not pleading anymore, but _pleased_.

His hand moves to press against her abdomen, keeping her in place against his mouth as she gets increasingly frantic beneath him. 

"Yeah, yes, like that, _yes_ ," she's moaning, loud and lovely sounds that are muffled by the way she's got her thighs pressed against his ears, and her hands knotted in his hair to keep him from getting free. 

It shouldn't be possible, probably _wouldn't_ be possible for a _human_ male, and he doesn't mind making that assumption, in fact, he might actually believe it, but he speeds his tongue even faster, punctuating a series of rapid beats with a quick, hard suck to her clit. She shatters around him, one long moan that he wants to record and set as every alert tone on the entire console, the whims of the TARDIS be damned.

Rose is shuddering beneath him as he eases her down, gentle laps of his tongue that she only endures for a few moments before she's lightly tugging at his hair, pushing him away.

He pulls back and presses a hard, wet kiss to the inside of her thigh, marking her again and wiping the moisture from his mouth against her skin. 

The pressure of her hands in his hair increases again, this time tugging him up. He follows along with it, sliding himself up until they're face to face again. 

"That was..." She's still breathing heavily, and even if she never finishes that sentence, he's still going to be insufferable with ego for weeks. 

"That was amazing," she says. 

And, oh, better make it months. Insufferable with ego for _months_. 

Her right hand untangles from his hair, skating down the length of his back, as she uses her left to bring his mouth down to hers. She kisses him, wet and messy, a slow, meandering thing that leaves him foggy enough that's he surprised when her hand slips by his hip and fits between their bodies to grasp his cock. 

She starts up a firm stroke against him and he loses all pretense of maintaining the kiss, instead dropping his mouth to work half-heartedly against her neck, his best efforts manifesting in undignified, guttural noises that he feels to the very tips of his toe. 

"I think I can be amazing, too," she says, voice quiet and breath warm next to his ear.

"Ohhhh," and he's dragging it out as he feels her hand leave his cock, flutter somewhere nearby, and return much slicker. It's the figuring out where that moisture came from that's responsible for the refrain, another hitched _oh_ , as he distractedly nips at her earlobe. "I think you're already amazing."

She presses a kiss to the side of his face, an untargeted sign of affection that his brain processes as tender.

"Wanna be amazing together?" she says, her hand moving to position him in that spot his mouth has recently become so fond of. 

"We're already amazing tog--"

A loud cry, the cry of a child, echoes through the floorboards and doesn't let up -- hysterical sobbing followed by the closing of the front door beneath them. 

He pushes up off of her reflexively as a series of rapid footsteps hit the stairwell, growing louder as the stairs are climbed. They're followed quickly by another set, clearly in high heels.

"Doctor, Rose," Catie calls, voice rising and falling as she passes the door to the room, "Nothing to worry about! Caleb missed a goal, it'll all be fine, don't come out, no need to see this!"

The sobbing continues and Rose is staring up wide-eyed beneath him. He's no longer pressed to her, but she's still holding his cock. He looks down at it, at her hand, and closes his eyes briefly in regret, as the crying turns to high-pitched wailing. 

Her hand unwraps from him slowly, and she drops it to her stomach, scratching lightly at the skin there.

"Might drown us out," she says, smiling and tipping her head in the direction of Caleb's room.

"Might do," he agrees, but it's clear neither of them are going to be testing that theory. He shifts off the bed with one last kiss, pressing his mouth to hers, before he's standing to find his discarded pants. 

"Children go to bed eventually," Rose tells him when they're back in their pajamas and watching the telly once more. 

"They do," he says. "And I can be very, _very_ quiet."


	3. Chapter 3

As it turns out, it's not only children that go to bed eventually, it's all humans, and Rose falls asleep only a few minutes after Caleb does.

He'd been trying for safety, to make sure the boy was really out for the night, before restarting whatever it was he and Rose had been playing at.

Destroying their friendship, strengthening their friendship, shagging, it didn't matter what he called it, he wanted to get back to it.

Except now he's sleeping with Rose in a more literal sense, trying not to stare at her as she breathes deep and even next to him.

He could wake her up, slip his fingers against that patch of skin between the waistband of her knickers and the bottom of her (his) t-shirt -- all the things he'd thought about doing the handful of times she's fallen asleep in his presence, he could do them now, and he's sure they would be welcome.

Except she really does need to rest. Days on this planet are shorter than on Earth, 18 hour cycles, and only six of them allotted for sleeping, which is going to present a problem for Rose "20 More Minutes" Tyler even without his meddling.

With a sigh, he lays down beside her -- Rose on her back, him on his stomach, with an arm thrown out across her hips for good measure. He curls his fingers into the far edge of her t-shirt, hitching it up enough that his palm can rest over her hipbone and the thin, soft skin that covers it.

He doesn't really need to sleep right now, but he's certainly physically capable of it (among other things, _ahem_ ) and with a series of deep, concentrated breaths, he falls asleep beside her.

There are wandering hands and contented noises in the middle of the night, a brush of lips against the angle of her jaw, fingers that pass and linger over his erection as she readjusts against him, but it's nothing with urgency, nothing that panics him. Just the motions of two people comfortable sharing a bed, and when he drifts off again, his only regret is that they hadn't done it sooner.

&&.

Morning comes with a sharp knock on their door.

"Breakfast in 30 minutes," Catie's voice chirps through the thin wood.

Rose grumbles beside him, pushing him to his back and burying her head in the side of his neck. Her tongue darts out to lick at the skin there and he can he feel her lips twist as she comes more fully awake, realizing where she is. Where _they_ are.

"Good morning, Rose Tyler," he says into a mouthful of her hair as she burrows further into him, arm snaking across his waist to scratch at the flat of his abdomen.

It feels amazing, the light press of her nails as she dances them through the hair above the waistband of his pants. He's hard, but it's without much intent, fuzzy memories of dreams and warm skin, and his body running through its processes even as he sleeps.

"Good morning, Doctor," she answers, mouth still against his skin, the movement tickling against his Adam's apple. Her hand finds his erection anyway and she punctuates the end of the sentence with a light squeeze that makes him exhale loudly.

She pulls back before he can return the gesture, kneeling beside him and eyes narrowing on his as she cups a hand over her mouth.

"You're not gonna be weird about this then?" Her words are muffled by her fingers.

"Weird about what?"

She moves the hand from her mouth, gesturing between the two of them before returning it and speaking again.

"This. _Us_ ," she says.

He pushes himself up to a sitting position.

"No," he says, and then stops to consider. "Well, what you're doing with your hand there is a little weird, but that's certainly not a behavior I'm responsible for."

She laughs and climbs out of bed, "Morning breath," she says and retreats into the en suite.

The door opens a couple of minutes later, as he hears the flush of the loo and the tap at the sink being turned on.

That she hadn't kept it shut seems to indicate he has permission to enter and he pushes himself out of bed and walks toward her, watching through the open door as she washes her hands.

He combs his hair down with his fingers as his feet meet the cool tile of the bathroom and then he's standing next to her at the counter. She's begun brushing her teeth and she pauses to size him up in the mirror, eyes tracking down his body to linger on all sorts of places he hopes she'll remember to visit again later.

Perhaps it _should_ be weird, standing next to Rose in only his pants and a head full of sleep-mussed hair, but it doesn't feel weird. It feels...nice.

He lets his eyes wander over her reflection in return. Her t-shirt is wrinkled, brushing the tops of her thighs, and she grins at him around her toothbrush before tugging at the hem of the shirt, pulling it up briefly so he can see a flash of her knickers before letting it fall back down.

In the mirror, Rose winks at him and he can't help but laugh in response.

He moves for his own toothbrush lying on the counter, and purposefully bumps her hip with his own as he turns the tap on and off again, wetting the bristles.

She finishes before him, spitting and rinsing and giving him a wide, toothy smile that he nods in appreciation of.

They haven't spoken much at all, mouths full of apparent morning breath and then toothpaste, but as she moves to the shower door and opens it to turn the tap on, she speaks again.

"Where's this you not acting weird thing stop?" she asks as he finishes brushing his teeth. It's sort of refreshing, mouth all minty clean, he'll have to remember to do that more often. Much nicer than just regulating the bacteria in his mouth on his own.

"What do you mean 'where does it stop?' It's not like I have a timer on or anything." He rearranges their toothbrushes so they're lying side by side on the counter, pink and blue and completely domestic. He stares hard at them for a moment, trying to call up anxiety or worry, guilt, caution, any of his old friends, but they're nowhere to be found.

"Of course not," she says, hand reaching out to test the temperature of the water before adjusting the tap again. "I just mean...well, it's not like you, is it?"

She's right, and they both know it, his own thoughts are evidence of that. It's like he's actively looking to feel ill at ease about all this, and just can't find a way to do it, like pressing down on what you thought was a bruise only to find out it's an ink smudge.

"No," he agrees. "It's not like me." His eyes glance around the room, their reflections again, and the smooth skin of her legs. "But it's not like you ether, is it? Usually you're wearing, you know, _trousers_." He waves a hand in the air indicating her legs, as if she could possibly be in doubt about where her trousers normally are.

"Yeah," she says, chewing on her lip as the noise of the shower echoes in the background. "But it's like...it's not me that keeps my trousers on, you know?"

He raises his eyebrows.

"Well, it _is_ me," she amends. "But only because I thought you wanted me to keep them on." Her eyes dart back to the shower, "Not something in the water here, is there? Making you all domestic?"

It's not a bad guess, all told, that there's something in the air, something on this planet, stripping him of carefully constructed inhibitions and boundaries. It wouldn't be hard to lie either, to say that, why, yes, he does feel a little odd, and why don't they just go ahead and retreat to platonic best mates until it's all cleared up?

But it's not the truth, and it's not what he wants. Whatever it is that's giving him this freedom, he wants to just enjoy it, to stop fussing and fighting.

And talking about it, he wants to stop talking about it, too, because even if he can't find the pressure points and the weak spots, he's confident Rose will be able to. He wants them both to stop looking and just...enjoy each other.

"No," he finally says. "Nothing in the water. And, for the record, it's not that I _want_ you to keep your trousers on, it's that I _thought_ I should want you to keep your trousers on -- does that make sense?"

She laughs, "For anybody else, no. For you, perfect sense."

There's a brief silence where he's able to recognize that the mirror is starting to fog over from the heat of the water. "Are you going to take a shower?" he asks. "Or are you steam-cleaning my undershirt?"

Tugging on the shirt, she looks up at him impishly. "You think you'll be able to keep not being weird long enough to get clean?"

He swallows, parsing through the sentence, "What, together?"

She shrugs, but her grin gives her away. The shower isn't very big, but it could probably fit the both of them, and it's glassed in, so he'll either be in there with her, be outside but still able to see her, or have to leave the room entirely.

It's not the hardest decision he's ever made.

"Allons-y," he says, and gestures at the shower. Her eyes widen only the slightest bit, then she's meeting his gaze, something like a challenge in her eyes as she reaches for the bottom of her t-shirt.

"How much time do we have?" she asks, when her shirt is just high enough that he can see her knickers, and his mouth has gone completely dry. Hot, and minty, and dry.

"Before what?"

She laughs and tugs the shirt higher, her hipbones, her belly button, the bottom of her ribcage, all of it revealed like a bloody great sunrise or something. "Before breakfast," she says.

"Oh, um." He scratches at the back of his neck, where the condensation in the air is making his hair damp. "About 18 minutes? 17 by the time we get in there," he tips his head toward the shower.

She nods. "17 minutes. I can work with that." Then she's tugging her shirt over her head, whipping her knickers down her legs, and hopping into the shower in one colorful movement that leaves him staring at a wide expanse of wet skin.

She'd been naked last night, and he'd been naked, too, but there's something different about it happening again, something like the way an addict is always just dabbling, just experimenting, right up until the moment they're in rehab. 

His hands settle on his hips without looking, there's no hope of his eyes going anywhere that isn't Rose's body under the spray of the shower. He's had thoughts like this, dreams like this, hundreds, no, _thousands_ of times, running parallel to all the clatter that's constant in his brain. The clatter that is now blissfully silent.

He loops his thumbs into the waistband of his pants, stretching them from his stomach and tugging them down with his breath held. He's still hard, because of course he's hard, but he can feel it's not anything too embarrassing, just a little hello, a little friendly _nice to see you again_ for every single inch of skin on Rose.

With slow, careful steps, in case she changes her mind, he walks to the open shower door, hand pausing to settle on the frame. The water is ricocheting off Rose's body, little flecks and droplets that dampen his skin as he finally drags his eyes from their very thorough visual investigation of what her breasts look like wet. 

He has to ask, even if it couldn't be more clear, "Are you sure this is okay?"  

She nods, with a small, reassuring smile. "I'm sure, c'mere," she says, and reaches out a hand to his shoulder, propelling him forward. His feet make a wet splash as they step over the lip of the shower and onto the tile, and he closes the door behind him. 

There's only a foot of space between them, crossed by Rose's arm as her hand slips from his shoulder to his elbow. The water is beating down, hot and insistent, and his mind is already mentally assessing the space, tumbling forward to determine traction and height differences and the dispersion of weight if he were to try and fuck her here. It's awfully presumptuous, but he's always been a presumptuous sort -- when the mood strikes, at least. 

He's just about worked it out -- she'll have to turn away from him, bend at the waist, and he's going to have to squat a little, but it should be manageable -- when Rose's voice breaks through the fog.

"Shampoo?" 

It's a word he knows, both in English and in Typuflian, where it means "scrambled eggs," but for some reason, or several pink and yellow and _wet_ reasons, he's having trouble fitting it in context. 

"What?"

She grins at him, tongue touching the corner of her mouth in a way that's both amused and charming. "May I have the shampoo?"

It's not very suave, groping at the shelf behind him while his eyes continue to dart across her body, the shower stall, himself, as if trying to process all of this as reality, but he manages. He thrusts the bottle toward her and follows numbly as she maneuvers him out of the spray of the water so she can wet her hair. 

She ducks back out of the spray and he reflexively moves under it once more, watching as she clicks open the shampoo bottle and squeezes some of the liquid into her palm before handing the bottle back to him.

"Come on," she says. "If we get through this part, we might have time for other parts."

He takes the bottle from her and repeats her movements, wet hair, shampoo in hand, hands on hair, scrubbing.

"Which parts?" He can't help himself from asking as he works the shampoo into a lather.

Her eyes skip down his body. "Oh, I don't know, maybe the…hardly used ones?"

He's never gotten clean with such purpose in his entire life, running quickly through all the appropriate shower steps as Rose matches him. Navigating the small space isn't easy, but it's less of a problem as it a solution, skin rubbing against skin, everything wet and warm and naked. If his erection before was a friendly greeting, it's now a full parade, complete with a marching band and balloons. 

When they're finally clean, she looks at him through a curtain of wet hair. "How much time do we have left?"

"11 minutes," he says automatically, only realizing once it's left his mouth that maybe he should have padded it a little bit, made her think they had plenty of time for all their hardly used parts.

She tilts her head, face screwing up in concentration, and then she nods. 

"All right," she says. "Tell me when it's been a minute." And without preamble, she rises up to slip her arms around his shoulders, fingers weaving through the damp strands of his hair as she tugs his face toward hers. 

Their mouths meet and open, lips pressed against lips, heads angling as their tongues get reacquainted. As far as he's concerned, her tongue is his tongue's best mate, and they should never be parted, dancing around all merrily and wet, and, god, _fuck_ , god, she is so _naked_. 

He can't even find a place to settle his hands, skimming them up and down her back, her bum, her hair, and her breasts, oh, god, her _breasts_ , all pressed up against his bare chest. There's his cock trapped between their stomachs, and her teeth on his bottom lip, and the needy little noises coming from somewhere in his throat and into her open mouth. 

The solid heat of her tongue is a contrast to the foggy heat of the air, and he anchors himself around it, clutching her even closer to him as some distant part of his brain counts out the minute as she requested. He backs her up against the wall without thought, both of them wincing into the kiss as the cold air hits them, but it doesn't matter, because she's so _slippery_ and _squirmy_ and he'll keep her warm through sheer force of will if he has to. 

He worms a hand between them, finding the closest breast, and it's such a good idea, such a fucking _brilliant_ idea, that his other hand gets in on it, each one now with a handful of Rose's breasts, fingers edging and ringing and lightly-but-not-too-lightly pinching her nipples. He's feeling Rose up, naked, in the shower, while she kisses him they like do in the movies, messy and rough and full of enthusiasm, and oh, fuck fuck fuck, it's been a minute.

"Time," he manages, wrenching his mouth back with a regretful sound that he chases back to her lips. "It's been a minute."

She presses a light kiss to his lips and then grins up at him. 

"Perfect," she says. "Ta," and then she's got her hands on his hips, navigating him so that they've switched places, his back to the wall, her in front of him and half under the spray of the water. With a quick glance behind her to assess the space, she kneels in front of him, hands bracketing his hips, and he nearly chokes himself on hope. 

She looks him in the eye and then drops her gaze, slow and deliberate, to where his cock is hard and twitching a few inches from her mouth. 

"What are you doing?" He doesn't even know why he says it, the sentence hushed and broken and full of want, because it's clear what she's doing, or what she's about to do.

"Making friends," she says, and then angles her head to lick his cock, right from the base to the tip, and oh, god, yes, her tongue can be best mates with that bit of him, too, friends with all of him, the Doctor and Rose's tongue, a serial drama for the ages and explicitly rated. He's just about sold the movie rights when she fits her hand around him, steadying his erection right in front of her mouth, and how, _how_ did he forget about her hand, and no, no, no, it can't just be her tongue, it's all of her, and all of him, and they've always had it right. 

Before he can do anything that seems like a great idea now, but will probably be embarrassing in a few hours, like beg, her mouth descends, fitting all the way around his cock to meet her hand, and, fuck, the shower, the shower full of _water_ , is nothing compared to the warm, wet heat of Rose's mouth.

She sucks at him leisurely, tongue tracing along the underside of his cock, the head, learning the texture and shape of him in a way he's not even sure he knows in this body, and her hand, her perfect, lovely hand in complete accompaniment, chasing the movements, tightening and loosening and stroking as she makes encouraging little noises against his skin. 

His hands ball up into fists uselessly at his sides, banging in sporadic movements against the shower stall as she chases him toward the edge. She pauses briefly, eyes glancing up, and, good fucking god, locking eyes with Rose Tyler, while her mouth is wrapped around his cock, if he never sees another star being born, never sees another sunset, another rainbow, never sees anything but the inside of this shower again, it will all be worth it for that image. 

She finds one of his hands with her free one, guiding it to settle on her head with a small nod of permission. His other hand mirrors the placement, resting lightly against her head, the tips of his fingers twining under the damp strands of her hair. When he's settled, she starts up again, somehow more targeted, more precise, working him with intent, as he fights to keep his hands still, to not clutch her to him and fuck her mouth. 

He compromises on following the rhythm she's set, his hands and hips working in tandem to keep up with her movements, to embrace them, to enjoy them, to -- oh, god, oh, fuck. Her hand tightens around him, and his own fight to do the same in her hair, hips stuttering as she sucks and licks and -- 

"Close," he gets the word out, somewhere between a grunt and a groan. "Gonna come."

Her lips stretch around him, and she's smiling, but not relenting, her tongue swiping, so much suction and heat and friction and he can't keep it back, can't hold out any longer, and it rushes through him in a wave of chaos, everything surging around his cock as he comes, spilling into her mouth, pulsing, as she swallows around him and guides him through it. 

When he's done, everything in him sated and boneless and singing, Rose rocks back onto her heels, grinning up at him as she makes a show of cracking her neck. Then she's swiping a hand over her mouth and rising to stand in front of him. He's sagged back into the wall of the shower, propped up, and he shakes his head back and forth on the tile, trying to swim through to coherent thought. 

"That was," he swallows, tries again. "That was brilliant."

She grins, a pleased and knowing thing that's only matched by the twinkle in her eye.

"Thank you," he adds.

She exhales a little laugh, and leans up to press a kiss to his mouth. "You're welcome," she says when she drops back down. "And thank _you_ for last night. Sorry I fell asleep."

With energy he doesn't actually possess, he shrugs his shoulders. "Boring, old married life. Wouldn't expect anything different."

Her grin matches his as they rinse off once more, a complicated, synced dance as they exit the shower. Rose pads naked into the bedroom, save for a towel around her head, and he's struck with the image of her doing the same thing on the TARDIS, so many hallways, and so, so naked. 

Getting dressed is a rushed affair, and it's time for breakfast just as he's finishing on his hair, Rose leaning carefully into the mirror beside him to apply her mascara. 

"You go ahead," she tells him. "I'll be right down."

He straightens his tie, running a final hand through his hair, and moves to leave the room, but then he's turning back, something pulling him in to deposit a kiss on Rose's cheek before he can think better of it. 

The smile she gives him in return simultaneously loosens a tightness in his chest and makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, but then he's forcing himself out of the room and into the hallway. 

Breakfast awaits, and they've got a big day coming up. 


	4. Chapter 4

Remarkably, the Doctor is quite good at golf. Good enough, at least, to irritate the various husbands of Stepford.

Thomas, Tyler, Trevor, Travis, Timothy, he can't keep any of them straight except for Tate, and it's only because Tate is Catie's husband, and he and Rose are staying in their house.

And also because 'Tate-y' rhymes with 'Catie' -- a handy mnemonic device, and something Tate is not pleased to have pointed out.

Tate is the one that had driven him to the course this morning, and leant him a spare set of clubs, and now it's Tate again that's explaining at the turn before the 10th hole that they hadn't anticipated their usual fourth to show up today, but, _well, would you look at that, terribly sorry, but there he is_.

It's not an inconvenience for the Doctor, who, frankly, had grown bored of hitting little balls with little sticks, and was nearing the point of searching his pockets for a cricket bat to liven things up.

But it does mean he's now being shunted off to shopping with the ladies. Because leaving someone to their own devices is dreadfully _gauche_.

Tate instructs him into the backseat of the country club's hired car and ten minutes later, he's dropped in front of a sprawling, perfectly manicured outdoor shopping complex.

He'd not phoned Rose to tell her he was on his way, hoping to maybe surprise her in a fitting room, or a loo, or behind a particularly large tree, but Tate must have told Catie, because they're waiting for him on a bench as soon as he makes his way from the valet area.

"Hello, Doctor," Catie says, voice exceedingly chipper as she and Rose stand to greet him. "My Tate is ever so sorry that you couldn't play the back nine with them. He mentioned you were _very_ good, I'm sure the men would have loved to see more from you."

The Doctor doubts that _very_ much, and is just about to say so when Rose catches his eye, looking murderous.

He clears his throat. "Right, yes, well, I'm here now. Anything I can do to help?" He chances a glance at Rose on the last word, and she brings her hand to her mouth, thumb and pinky finger extended out as she tips it toward her lips.

Right, yes, Rose Tyler would like a drink, but as Catie smiles and indicates he can help by holding shopping bags, he thinks a tranquilizer might be the better choice.

&&.

Apparently in Stepford even shopping trips abide by their own mini-schedule. It simply wouldn't do for the entire town to mismatch their wardrobe aesthetics.

There's a carefully crafted strategy to prevent anyone embracing bohemian chic, when it's clearly time for seaside holiday.

Before the Doctor arrived, the morning had been spent acquiring active-wear, and he's nearly tuned Catie's recap out entirely when she mentions that Rose had purchased a lovely tennis skirt.

"It's a little, well..." Catie lowers her voice, "... _risque_ for Stepford. We usually abide to a strict fingertip-length regulation, and I'm not sure why the shop even got it in, but it did look ever so flattering on Rose."

The Doctor turns to Rose with his eyebrows raised and she grins at him, dangling a shopping bag in front of him as Catie maintains her brisk pace through the mall.

She turns back when she realizes they're missing from her side, trying to entice them to keep up by continuing the conversation.

"Did you say you run a lot, Rose? Is that at the gym or...?"

Rose laughs. "No, it's more, um... necessity driven. And usually outside."

The Doctor feigns offense. "Rose Tyler, that is patently untrue. You ran in a gym just last week."

Rose nudges him with the shopping bag she's carrying, the one containing the apparently very flattering skirt. "No, I ran _through_ a gym, being chased by  a band of angry Phygiapods. That's not the same thing."

The Doctor shrugs. "Semantics."

Catie makes a sharp left into a shop with a window display of nautically-inspired mannequins.

"Well," Catie says, "whatever it is, it's working. You're very well toned."

The Doctor makes a show of looking Rose over, eyes skating down her outfit. She'd tucked her shirt into her jeans, apparently a bid to fit in more with the tidily dressed citizens of Stepford and it's driving him mental with the urge to untuck it, to get her good and properly rumpled.

"Yes," he agrees. " _Very_ well toned.  _Flexible_ , too, right?"

"Thanks," Rose says, demurring to Catie before shooting the Doctor a cheeky look. "And I'm  _extremely_ flexible when it counts."

Catie's eyes light up. "Oh, like at yoga? We all do yoga three times a week in the park at sunrise. We went just this morning, I wish I would have known, I'd have invited you along."

Before Rose can respond, the Doctor jumps in. "Oh, no, no, Rose was plenty busy this morning. Prayers to start the day, you know how it is. Genuflecting, on her knees, even caught her at it in the shower. Very devout, my Rose. Isn't that right, love? You might even... _pray_ again tonight, don't you think?"

Rose's eyes widen, a smirk playing at the corners of her lips as she recovers. "I don't know, Doctor. I think maybe it's  _your_ turn to pray, isn't it?"

He nods happily. "Yes, I think you're right. May be best if we prayed together though, don't you think? Try something new? If we can find the time, of course."

Catie has made her way to a display of boat shoes, holding one of the floor models out over her feet and then Rose's, as if trying to imagine what they'd look like on. She decides against them and replaces the shoe.

"You're welcome to attend church here if you'd like," she tells them. "There are non-denominational services every Saturday and Sunday."

Rose sputters to defer. "No, no, that's all right. We're sort of...new. To this religion, I mean. Best keep it behind closed doors for now."

Catie nods, turning to a rack of striped shirts. "I completely understand. Prayer can feel awfully intimate, can't it?"

He leers at Rose behind Catie's back, for lack of anything better to do in the face of sloppy, blasphemous innuendo.

"Intimate, indeed," he says and Rose's resulting expression is devastating, wrapped up in hope and promise and _tongue_.

"Anyway," Catie says, turning to Rose with one of the striped shirts from the rack in her hand, "it's still Thursday yet, and we have tonight's movie to think of, have to get you dressed in the theme."

Rose looks from the shirt to Catie's face and then back to the Doctor. "You have to dress up for a movie in the park?"

"Well, you don't _have_ to, but it _is_ a requirement. Much less whimsical when you think of it that way though, don't you think?"

She shoves the striped shirt at Rose. "Tonight we'll be watching 'Finding Nemo,' so -- _ta-da_! -- a nautical theme!"

Rose takes the shirt with a confused expression. "What about the Doctor? Doesn't he need some nautical kit?"

Catie turns to him, scrutinizing his suit so closely that she gets a little wrinkle in her brow. The longer she looks at him, the more anxious he becomes, visions of shorts or, oh god, _sandals_ violently assaulting his mind.

"No, no, I think I'm already sorted," he says, pointing to the faint lines on his suit. "See? Stripes. And a suit, like a _swim_ suit? Ooh, or an officer's suit! That's me, then! Rose, your turn!"

He shuffles Rose, striped shirt in hand, toward the fitting room before Catie has a chance to protest. Rose doesn't look pleased with him, but, well, every time traveler for themselves when bare knees are at stake.

Catie snags a pair of cropped black trousers and thrusts them at Rose just as she's got the fitting room door open.

"These, too," Catie says happily, and then Rose is shutting the door with more force than the action requires.

He and Catie take a seat on the small bench provided and he's prepared to spend the next few minutes vividly imagining Rose undressing behind the door, when Catie hijacks his plans.

"It wasn't very long ago that you were here before, you know," she says. "For us, I mean. It's clearly been much longer for you." She gestures vaguely at his face and seems to realize the movement is rude, dropping her hand back down to her lap.

He nods, trying to decide if it's worth it to get into regeneration, and, in fact, _five_ regenerations since they'd last seen him, when Catie continues.

"You must have a heck of a surgeon," she says, "although I hope they gave a discount for leaving you with all that sun damage." She taps at her own cheek to indicate his freckles and he's left to frown in response.

Sun damage? _Damage_? That sounds negative, he'd always thought his freckles were endearing, charmingly boyish, playful, not _damage_.

Once more, before he can reply, Catie's charging on and, blimey, is this what it's like to talk to him? No one else getting a word in?

"Suppose you're handsome enough," she says. "I did prefer the blond, though. At least you've managed to find a suitably blonde wife. It's must have been a long time for you, you and Rose seem very comfortable together."

It's all rapid fire, pelting him from every direction, _blonde_ and _wife_ and _comfortable_. There's a panic rising in his chest, sitting in a shop on one of the most domestic planets the universe has to offer, Rose trying on clothes, and he lets it wash over him.

These -- _these_ are the feelings that have been missing, his greatest hits album finally ready to spin again.

He nods numbly in response to Catie, trying to parse exactly where the anxiety is coming from -- is it that Rose will clearly leave him someday? That he's not human and should stop acting like one? Too affectionate, too familiar, too close?

Or is it that he doesn't deserve her, doesn't deserve this, not after what he's done? Because certainly he won't _say_ what he feels for Rose, won't give the universe that kind of ammunition, but isn't showing it just as bad?

He's not sure whether those questions even have answers and before he can begin to look for them, the door to the dressing room opens and Rose steps out.

It's not a particularly elaborate outfit, nothing like some of the dresses he's seen her in, or even some of the more traditional planet-specific get-ups, but it's entrancing all the same.

The slim black trousers stop above her ankles, showing off the delicate bones there, the ones leading down to her feet where they shift nervously on the hardwood floors. The top is clingy, but not excessively so, a nicely draped cotton with black and white stripes, and his brain immediately counts the stripes, calculates the distance they're spaced apart.

To him, it doesn't seem very nautical, but it does seem vaguely Audrey Hepburn, and, for whatever else is going on inside his head, he finds it easy to smile at her appreciatively, nodding in approval.

Rose's eyes shift to look down the length of her body, hands smoothing out the cotton of her shirt over her hips, her stomach, before tugging at the hem. She smiles at him, just one side of her mouth lifting, eyebrows raising to seek another affirmation of approval, and he gives it gladly.

"It looks great," he says, and this time he's rewarded with a full smile.

"Yeah? I sort of like it, too, actually. Wouldn't have picked it out or anything, but it's not bad at all," she says.

Next to him, Catie bounds up off the bench to coo enthusiastically at Rose, spinning her around in a circle. "Not bad? Oh, it's _perfect_ ," she says. "You'll fit right in! Go ahead, take that outfit off, and we'll see about getting you a dress for the theatre tomorrow."  

Rose shifts on her feet. "I've already got a dress for tomorrow," she says. "Brought something from home."

Catie's brow furrows, but she shrugs anyway. "Oh, well...all right, if you think it'll do."

Nodding, Rose turns back to the dressing room, and shortly they're back out of the store, Rose's outfit purchased and dangling from her fingertips in a bag next to the one containing the tennis skirt.

Left without further distraction as Catie leads them across the mall to a restaurant for lunch, the Doctor's thoughts swing back to rising panic and a need for distance. When Rose reaches for his hand, he fakes a cough.

She gives him a searching look and doesn't try again.

When they're seated in the restaurant, Catie excuses herself to use the loo, or check in with Tate, or light something on fire, the Doctor's not exactly sure what she's doing, because all of his energy is being used up studiously avoiding Rose while trying to seem like he's not studiously avoiding Rose.

A waiter comes by to fill their water glasses, and as she leaves, Rose sighs beside him.

"So this is it, then?"

Despite himself, he glances at her and sees the way her shoulders are slumped, the sad smile playing at her lips.

"This is what?" he asks, and wasn't that stupid? Now she's going to answer and he's going to have something _else_ to feel bad about, he's sure.

"The end of...whatever we were doing," she says. "I figured it would end, it's not really like you at all, just thought..."

"Thought what?" It's out of his mouth before he can stop it and he nearly claps a hand over his mouth trying to keep from saying more.

She shrugs. "I just thought, well, _hoped_ , really, that we might get a proper shag in before it hit," she says. "Guess I misjudged how quickly you'd come back around to all that 'curse of the Time Lords' stuff."

His offense is far from feigned as he pushes back from the table, the legs of the chair groaning as they scrape the ground.

" _Stuff_? You think the destruction of my planet, the end of the Time War, by my own hand is... _stuff_?"

Rose shakes her head, her entire posture slumped with resignation.

"No, I don't think it's  _stuff_ ," she says. "But you take it so much farther than it has to go, Doctor. What you did was awful, but it had to be done and it was awful for you, too. It was the right thing."

His lips part, wanting to cut her off, to interject, to leave the restaurant and this planet, but she keeps going.

"And I can't even pretend to imagine what it's like, any of it, but I do know, if the situations were reversed, if I had to do something like that, you'd tell me I couldn't let it define me, you'd tell me...I don't know! That I still needed to try to be happy, that there was so much to live for, so many things to enjoy. You'd tell me there's a planet where the clouds are made of marshmallow and how on Astrovia 4, they literally wear their hearts on their sleeves and --"

This time he does cut her off. "I _am_ happy," he says, his thoughts assembling right as he's speaking. "I'm _so_ happy that I know it can't last, that the universe isn't this kind, and seeing life like this, life like you _could_ have, _should_ have, if it weren't for me, it's just...whatever it was we were doing, Rose, it wasn't a good idea."

Rose hesitates for a split second, he can see it, the moment of inaction as she charts her course, and then she's -- rather unexpectedly -- rolling her eyes at him.

"Oh, god, Doctor, really? _Really_? The old 'Rose would be happier without me?' I thought we'd left that behind."

It takes him aback, being called out so matter of factly, and he feels momentarily apologetic. It must show on his face because Rose latches onto it.

"There!" she crows. "You _know_ it! You know I'm not leaving you, and that I'm happier than I've ever been, so whether we shag or not, let's just stop it with all the who deserves what and who would be better off where rubbish, yeah?"

He nods, stunned and awed and full of so much of that word he won't say he's nearly bursting with it, but there's also a part of him that wants to save a teensy bit of face, and he can't help himself.

"It was the domestic thing, too, a little bit," he says, petulantly. "Just so you know."

She laughs, actually _laughs_ at him. "Of course it was, Doctor. But what I did to you in the shower this morning? That's part of domestics. And what I plan to do with you tonight, that's domestics, too. So you figure out where you stand, and you let me know."

Before he can answer, Catie's sweeping back up to the table.

"I'm so sorry for the interruption," she says, and the next hour is lost to a lunch full of another kind of domestics entirely, and this type is much less fulfilling.

&&.

Six hours later, dinner has been eaten, Rose is dressed in her Audrey Hepburn kit (complete with loafers that had taken another 30 minutes to buy), and they're in the middle of the short walk to the park to watch the outdoor movie.

He's not quite given Rose a response, but he's holding her hand, and she'd smirked at him as she'd gotten changed right in front of him, so he figures maybe she knows.

Still, as they reach the park, and Catie hands them a large blue blanket and two low folding chairs, instructing them to pick out a spot to watch the movie, he leans down to Rose's ear.

"I'm in," he says.

Her grin is so bright that he can't help beaming back at her, and then she's leading him toward the back of viewing area.

"Yeah? In that case," she says, "let's sit back here." 

The rest of the town is spread out across the large, grassy field, the projection screen set up at the front of it, but Rose pulls him toward a tree just along the far side before shaking the blanket out.

They unfold the chairs onto it, placing them as close together as they can without the arms overlapping. The chairs only lift a few inches off the ground, and when they sit, it's easy to angle his body so his legs brush Rose's stretched out in front of them.

They're easily the farthest people out and the other trees will assure that no one will sit behind them. The sun is already nearly set, and it's plenty dark, just enough to make out the shapes of other couples and families in front of them. Whatever they do back here, if it's within reason, it won't be very visible to anyone else.

He still feels nervous, but it's a good combination of nerves, more anticipation of the evening ahead of them right now than the lonely misery ahead of him sometime in the yet to be determined future. It feels like something he wants to tell Rose, and as the movie starts, he leans into her, resting his arm on the armrest of her chair, too, so that his hand brushes her thigh.

"I meant it, you know," he says. "I'm in. I'll try to leave all that 'stuff' behind, as much as I can."

She smiles softly, turning to face him before tipping her forehead to his. "You're going to be rubbish at that, but I'll help."

He brushes his nose against hers before turning back to the movie, leaving his hand in her lap where she grips it with her own.

The movie continues, fish goes to school, fish gets lost, dad-fish sets out to find him. It's actually a movie he enjoys, but he's having a heck of a time paying attention, especially as Rose tips her head to his shoulder, tucking his hand between her thighs. His fingers curve around her leg reflexively, thumb running over the inside seam of her trousers, out toward her knee and back in.

She hums contentedly in the back of her throat and slumps down lower in her chair, bringing his hand higher up between her legs. Not exactly where he wants it, but so, so close.

He clears his throat, moving back to quickly strip off his suit jacket, and laying it over her lap.

"Are you cold? You look cold," he says, slipping his hand underneath the jacket to settle back in its former position between her thighs. "Is that better?"

She grins at him, eyes sparkling with humor, and moves to drop her hand in a similar position in his lap. He shakes his head, moving her hand back to the armrest, and dropping his arm over it this time, so she's pinned there.

"Let me," he says.

His fingers dance up the seam on her trousers one more time before he moves his thumb to the thin flat button below her navel. It takes some clever finger-work, but he manages to undo it, and the zipper underneath it, all while Rose's eyebrows arch higher and higher.

"OK?" he asks, fingers hovering at the opening of her trousers, skin just brushing the cotton of her knickers. She nods and scoots around in her chair until she's slouched low, her legs splayed open, and there's slightly more room for him to work.

Gently slipping his hand up the bottom of her shirt, he draws a line down from her belly button to the top of her knickers and then stops to edge along the waistband, back and forth, back and forth, as Rose's breathing grows deeper next to him.

There are so many options, keep his fingers outside of her knickers, slip his fingers inside of her knickers, move all the way back out to her trousers and press the seam against her center, and he doesn't know, can't decide, what he wants to do.

Instead, he leans in, pressing a wet, open-mouthed kiss to her neck, and Rose groans next to him, tilting her face until she can bring her mouth to his.

They're not going to be able to kiss for very long, that, if nothing else, will be quite visible to anyone that turns around, so he takes advantage of the short time they have, slipping his tongue past her lips to twine with her own.

She tastes a little bit like the seasoning Catie had used on the dinner roast, but mostly like Rose, like the unique flavor of someone else's mouth, and he finds he likes it.

It's inoffensive enough, but mostly it's enticing because of what it means -- that he's kissing Rose, that it's Rose's tongue stroking along his own, back and forth between their mouths, little nipping kisses and wet kisses and kisses so deep they must look obscene.

Between them, his hand curls reflexively in her knickers, looking for purchase he'd usually find in her hair or around her neck, and it makes her buck up into him. He spreads his fingers wider, until the tips of them rest over cotton that's damp and warm, and then he curls his fingers again.

She pulls her mouth from his, letting out a small, breathy encouragement, and grinds down in her seat, squirming to get exactly where she wants him.

He knows where that is, had actually planned to deliberately avoid it, to tease her a little bit, but instead he compromises, brushing his middle finger over her clit only briefly, the material of her knickers creating a friction that she's apparently very much in favor of, if the needy sigh she lets go of means anything.

Up on the screen, a little cartoon fish is swimming around with some other cartoon fish, and if he paid any attention at all, he'd be able to place the scene, could probably rattle off the next line, or twenty, but his focus is narrowed down entirely to the heat of Rose underneath his fingers.

Moving his index and middle fingers to the side, he slips under the edge of her knickers and then back to her center. There's moisture there, he can feel it, and he arrows in on it, fingers moving to dip and spread and rub until it's actually audible, wet sounds he can only just hear over the movie and the light moaning Rose is doing at his side.

He moves the same two fingers to slip deeper inside of her now, a long, slow rhythm that creates even more noise. She's so fucking wet, it's a wonder the entire park can't hear it. His cock certainly can, straining against his trousers in a way that makes him pause to readjust, the pressure against the zipper building and building as he works his fingers inside Rose more intently.

Her free hand, the one not pinned under his arm, reaches down to grasp his wrist, keeping him in place and pressing down, fingers wrapped tight around skin and hair and bone as she tries to control his rhythm.

It's not going to be enough though, this angle and only two fingers, and so he slips his hand from inside her knickers. He plans to go right back in them, only from the top this time, but he can feel how wet his fingers are, how wet with _her_ , and instead he shakes her wrist off and slips from her trousers entirely.

He moves his hand out from underneath the blanket of his jacket, and brings his fingers to his mouth for a quick, wet suck before diving back into her knickers.

Rose is groaning in steady intervals now as he alternates between slipping inside of her and fluttering over her clit, rutting her hips against his hand as she curls her fingers into the arm rests of the chairs.

"Close, close, close," she says, trying to keep her voice quiet, "Right there, oh god -- right... _there_." And then her free hand is clasping over her mouth, muffling a shout, as she rides out the waves of her orgasm and his fingers continue to rub shallowly against her.

Soon, she's tugging at his wrist and squirming backward in her chair, clearly sensitive now that she's come, and he slips his hand from her trousers and from underneath his jacket once more.

This time, he takes a much more leisurely pace as he licks at his fingers, making sure to get all of the taste of her from them as she laughs softly, the sound reedy and pleased next to him.

She flexes the hand that had been pinned underneath his arm, twisting it back and forth at her wrist, and then slips both hands underneath his jacket to refasten her trousers.

When she's sorted, she shifts the makeshift blanket to his lap, hand brushing over his erection in an obvious sort of way. He can tell what she intends to do and he appreciates it -- oh, does he _ever_ appreciate it -- but he defers, slipping his hand beneath the jacket to hold hers.

"Would make a mess," he says when she looks at him questioningly and he can tell she wants to argue, so he presses his mouth to hers, kissing her for a moments before pulling back. "Later though?"

She nods happily and tips her head to his shoulder to watch the rest of the movie.


	5. Chapter 5

It hadn’t occurred to the Doctor to wonder where the folding chairs had come from for the movie. One minute they’d been walking to the park, and the next, they’d arrived and Catie had handed them the chairs.

Now, though, it’s clear that the folding chairs had come from a small shed just off to the side of the park, and the entire town seemed to be lining up at its door, turning in their chairs, blankets, and other movie-watching supplies to a woman holding a clipboard.

He considers handing their own chairs off to Catie, she’s the one that had signed them out or rented them or whatever the procedure was, but before he can find her, Rose is tugging him by the arm to join the queue.

“Sooner we can get this done, sooner we can go,” she tells him and she tops it off with a wink and a grin, so he’s not going to argue. 

The queue, like everything in Stepford, is offensively organized, everyone standing single file and, without thought, the Doctor and Rose slot in the same way, each of them carrying a chair and the Doctor standing behind Rose. 

It’s a clear, cool night with only the slightest breeze, and in front of him, the moonlight shines against Rose’s hair, the wind ruffling a few flyaway strands every so often. He takes a moment — several moments — to admire the picture it makes, the loveliest person in his life in a lovely park, the home-cooked meal they’d eaten before their night out, the bed in a stationary house they’ll share when they’re finished here. 

It’s enticing and frightening and baffling all at once, this life they could have — one Rose maybe _should_ have — but as the queue moves a few steps forward and Rose tosses another grin at him over his shoulder, he admits to himself that she won’t have that life. Because he can’t and, in his more honest moments, he knows he won’t let her go. 

Especially now that they’ve gone through this door in their relationship, the one leading to Rose’s breasts and hips and the sounds she makes when she comes. 

The thought of all those things builds to an impulse and he can’t stop himself from resting his hands on those hips where Rose stands in front of him. He drops his chair to the ground, leaning it against his leg before allowing his fingers curl into the cotton of her shirt. 

He tugs her back against him as she tips her head to his shoulder, pressing a kiss to the side of her head. When the queue begins to move again, he drops his hands lower, slipping his fingers into the belt loops of her trousers and shuffling her forward. There’s not much space between them and there’s even less when Rose shifts, pressing her bum back into him. 

She’s got her eyes trained forward, watching as they get closer to the front of the queue, and he flexes his hips into her, matching her action in reverse. The pattern repeats as they move closer to the shed, little flourishes added — Rose wiggles her bum against him, he lets a hand wander to her ribcage, his fingers brushing the bottom of her breast. 

By the time they reach the front, he’s half-hard in his trousers, a pleasant, quiet sort of arousal that stays in his blood even as his erection fades and they leave the park hand in hand.

They’re nearly back to Catie’s house, taking turns naming other movies about fish off their recent distracted viewing of Finding Nemo, when Rose stumps him with one he’s never heard of before.

“Should we go?” 

His eyebrows draw down in thought, Should We Go, Should We Go — “Who’s in that? I don’t think I’ve ever seen it.”

Rose laughs, stopping to nudge him in the side with her elbow before gesturing with her free hand to where the TARDIS sits on the corner. 

“No, should we _go_?”

Huh. The TARDIS. 

They’d come this same way to the park earlier and he hadn’t even noticed her, but there she is, right where they left her. There’s not even a guard posted or anything, they could just…walk right in and leave. 

But, as he peers down at Rose and the question in her eyes, he finds he’s not as keen to go as he usually is. 

“Do you want to?”

Rose shrugs. “I’m sort of…having fun. But don’t — we don’t have to stay, just because of me.”

Her eyes have dropped to her loafers and she kicks at a small pebble lying on the ground, sending it bouncing with a light sound into the moonlit street. 

“I’m having fun, too,” he tells her, and it doesn’t escape him that neither of them have answered the question directly, and that maybe they’re talking about more than staying in Stepford. 

“Yeah?”

He nods. 

“All right,” she says, “let’s stay then. I mean, if you want to.”

Standing there on that street corner, holding Rose’s hand, he wants whatever she wants, and he agrees to stay, tugging her along before stopping short once more.

Wait.

Street corner.

“Rose, what time is it?” 

She laughs. “You’re asking _me_?”

“Ah, right,” he says, focusing, “it’s…it’s 9:30, street corner, 9:30.”

“And 9:30 is important because…?”

“It’s not,” he says, “but it’ll do,” and with that, he leans down to kiss her. 

&&. 

Somehow Catie and her family beat them back to the house (the Doctor imagines it’s less _somehow_ and more _snogging_ ), and when they walk in everyone is just finishing up tea. 

“We’re heading to bed for the evening, but I’ve made a cup for both of you, as well,” Catie says, gesturing to two mugs on the counter before shooing a pajama-clad Caleb out of the kitchen. “You’re welcome to drink it in the living room and watch some telly. Only water upstairs though, please. Don’t want any _stains_.”

She says the last word as if it’s a vulgarity and the Doctor smothers a laugh.

“Of course, Catie,” Rose says, covering for him, “thank you so much for everything. We had a lovely evening.”

Catie preens before wishing them goodnight and following Tate and Caleb up the stairs.

“What do you think?” Rose asks. “Tea or bed?”

The Doctor scoops up the two mugs. “Tea _then_ bed.”

Rose follows him into the living room, seating herself in the middle of the sofa with a challenging look, as if he’d try to sit anywhere that isn’t pressed up against her anyway. 

He sets the two mugs on the low coffee table and then strips off his suit jacket before joining her on the sofa. They’d both taken their shoes off when they got in and he stretches his legs out so his feet rest on the coffee table. Rose tucks her own feet up underneath her, leaning into him as she reaches for the television remote.

She flips through the channels idly, landing on an old episode of The Office — the American one — on some Earth nostalgia network before grabbing her tea and settling against him. He wraps an arm around her shoulders and reaches for his own mug, fingertips stretching to grasp the handle without moving too far from Rose. 

They sit in silence for a while, finishing their drinks and putting them back on the table as one episode ends and another begins. He’s not paying much attention though, only focusing on the screen each time Rose’s light laughter fills the air. He soon finds that watching Rose as she’s laughing is much better than watching the telly and he gives up all pretense of it, tilting his head so he can see her more fully. 

She must feel him shift, and she turns further into him, bringing her forehead into a perfect position for him to press a kiss to it. It’s not enough to stop there, not now that he doesn’t have to stop himself anymore, and he moves his lips down, kissing her eyebrow, her temple, the apple of her cheek. 

Her mouth is just out of reach and he tries to will her to move so he can get to it. He could, of course, could brush his lips, or his fingers, back across her temple, plant a suggestion that she should shift up and kiss him, could use a hand to guide her, but that’s not what he wants. He wants her to do it on her own, the blood in his veins heating as his mind races forward to her lips pressed against him, her tongue stroking into his mouth, hot and wet and agile. 

When she does move, it’s to drop her hand on to his thigh, the slight weight of it warming him through the thin material of his trousers. Her fingers curl so that the tips brush against the inside seam of the cotton, scratching lightly up and down the puckered fabric. Everything is still so new, the feeling is exhilarating, the anticipation building as his hearts begin to gallop in his chest. 

Her fingers walk slowly up then retreat lower, only to climb a few centimeters higher on the return pass, meeting and crossing the bottom hem of his boxer briefs, before slipping lower to scratch lightly, so, so lightly, across where he’s stirring in his trousers. 

He nudges at her, nose in her hair, and she tips her face to meet his eye. This close he’s nearly cross-eyed trying to look at her mouth and instead of straining, he lets his eyes slip closed, lips parting reflexively as he waits for Rose to kiss him. 

It’s not immediate, long moments stretching as he feels the heat of her breath across his mouth, the smell of tea, the faint sounds of the telly in the background, and inside of him, arousal drips slowly, collecting in the tips of his toes, the base of his spine. It crawls, sticky and bubbling, into every inch of him until he feels like he weighs a thousand pounds, balanced on the pinhead of Rose Tyler’s existence. 

Then — _then_ — she presses her mouth to his. Her lips part to take in his bottom lip, the slightest bit of suction that has him tilting forward, trying to get more of it. The arm he’d had around her shoulders slips lower, moving so his hand can span across her back and bring her in closer.

Her mouth opens as she shifts and he mirrors the gesture immediately, tongue darting out quickly to swipe against her own before slipping back more slowly for a longer, fuller kiss. 

His free hand lifts to cup her check, fingers twining into her hair as he uses the position to tilt her head, angling his mouth against hers. The slightly grainy texture of her tongue slides against his, stroking back and forth, from his mouth to hers. It doesn’t feel like a pretty kiss, he can’t imagine that anyone would stop to admire the beauty of it, but it _feels_ amazing, consuming, wet heat and soft noises. 

Pushing himself back into the cushions, he drops his legs from the coffee table and turns at the waist until he can press Rose backward toward the arm of the sofa, resting his body over hers with his weight on his forearms. 

Rose’s arms come up to wrap around his waist, fingers scratching at his back through the material of his shirts. She balls the cotton up in her fists when he moves from her mouth to kiss the column of her neck, and he arches his hips against her with a muffled groan. 

There’s not much room on the sofa, the way he’s above her requires that he keep one foot on the ground and the other leg slotted between her own. The foot on the ground provides leverage though, and he’s able to push into her, his thigh in the perfect position to press into her, rubbing the seam of her trousers against her center as she begins to writhe beneath him. 

He trails his mouth down her throat, nosing aside the collar of her shirt to kiss and lick and suck at the spot where her neck meets her shoulder. She shudders beneath him, arching up, limbs scrambling to wrap around him until her hands are cupping his shoulders and her legs are wrapped around his thigh between them. 

Shifting his weight more fully on to the forearm against the back of the sofa, he uses his free hand to skate up her side, fingers stopping to span the width of her ribcage. She’s so small beneath him, this perfect, brilliant human, and he wants to protect her and he wants to stay with her and he wants to fuck her. 

He moves his hand higher, lifting up so there’s a space a between their chests and then he palms her breast, massaging it slowly, testing the weight, the feel, the softness. Whatever bra she’s wearing, and he tries to remember, tries to picture her getting ready and fails, it’s thin, so thin that he can feel the ridge of her nipple where it puckers underneath the fabric. He lets his thumb trace around the edges of it before circling in to pinch it lightly. 

The fabric between them may be thin, but right now it’s not thin enough, he wants to feel skin, and he can’t help swooping down to slip his hand underneath her shirt. He worms his hand between her back and the sofa, fingers scrabbling to undo the clasp of her bra before he returns to her front. Unclasped, her bra is easily shifted up underneath her shirt, his hand meeting the soft, smooth skin of her breast as he feels her tug down the collar of his shirt and press her teeth against his neck with a groan. 

It’s enough to refocus him and he’s suddenly aware of the way Rose is riding his thigh from below, hips undulating against him in a steady rhythm as muffled, reedy moans are pressed into his throat. 

He’d thought, earlier, that they’d find their way to the bed upstairs eventually, but each rock of her hips brings friction and pressure against his cock and soon he’s lost to it, grinding his thigh into her as she continues to ride it.

His hand keeps up against her breast, his tongue, teeth, lips pressed to every part of her he can reach until she’s writhing beneath him, needy and wanton as she chases her orgasm. His mouth finds her ear and he’s growling out encouragement, low and commanding.

“That’s it, that’s it,” he says, flexing his thigh so it catches the seam of her trousers, angling for her clit, “you’re gonna come, aren’t you? You’re almost there, just a little bit more.”

Rose responds in a series of pleading noises, biting off words and discarding them, “Yes, fuck, god, yeah, ohhh-that-feels-good, _fuck_ , fuck, fuck.”

“You look gorgeous like this,” he tells her, pressing a kiss in front of her ear, “so fucking good, I’m gonna fuck you, feel you around me, I bet you’re so wet — ”

Beneath him, Rose arches up, limbs tensing around him as she comes on a long groan, slapping a hand to her mouth to muffle the noise. It’s too much, he’s lost to it, frantically shifting on the narrow couch until both of his hips are between her own and he’s rutting against her, rapid, short thrusts that mimic what he wants to do when he’s inside of her. 

He’s not come in his trousers in literal centuries, but he’s on a collision course now, his cock straining for friction as Rose scrapes her nails against his scalp, wraps her legs around his hips, returns his encouragement in his ear.

“You’re so hard,” she says, voice breathy and hot at his temple where pinpricks of sweat are beginning to grow, “you feel so good, I’ve wanted this forever, wanted you to fuck me, wanted your cock — ”

He breaks, his orgasm rocketing through his body as he releases helplessly into his pants with a grunt. He stays pressed to Rose’s center until he feels the pulsing in his cock subside, settling bonelessly on top of Rose and half-heartedly maneuvering his leg free to drop to the ground again, helping to take some of his weight off of her.

Rose keeps her arms wrapped tight around him, nuzzling a kiss into his hair as he rests his forehead on her shoulder. 

On the television, the theme song to The Office plays as their breathing evens out, and when it’s finished Rose speaks.

“Can’t believe we just did that,” she says on a laugh.

“ _You_ can’t believe it? I just went off in my trousers. It’s all…sticky…and damp.”

“It was hot though,” she says and he can hear the grin in her voice.

“Yeah? _Hot_? You were pretty _hot_ , too,” he says, exaggerating the word before shifting down until his nose nestles against her breasts, nudging the loose fabric of her bra out of the way beneath her shirt.

“Ta,” she says, and then after a moment — “Sort of went backward though, didn’t we?”

“How do you mean?” He lets his eyes slip shut, wondering the odds of Rose agreeing to nap here before making the trip upstairs. They’re clothed after all, even if he’s got an embarrassing — but well-earned — damp patch spreading across the front of his trousers.

“I just mean…you’ve been in my knickers, we _showered_ together, natural next step didn’t seem to be…um…dry humping on the sofa.”

He raises an eyebrow good-naturedly, the movement hampered against her shirt. “ _Dry-humping_? Is that what humans are calling that these days?”

“Shut up, you know what I mean.”

He grins, finally finding the strength to push up off Rose and stand from the sofa. He reaches down a hand to help Rose up and laughs at her attempts to straighten her hopelessly rumpled appearance.

“Laugh it up, Wet Spot,” she says, gesturing at his trousers before grabbing the tea cups from the table and walking into the kitchen.

He roots around for the remote, discovering it halfway under the sofa and turns the television off, joining Rose in the kitchen just as she finishes rinsing their cups and placing them in the dishwasher.

He snags her fingers with his own, flipping the kitchen light off with his free hand as he leads her out of the kitchen and up the stairs. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It inexplicably took 21 months, but this story is finally complete!

Rose is a restless sleeper.

This isn't exactly news — anytime he's been in her room first thing, her blankets and sheets have been tangled, pulled into a pile from the bottom of the bed, a tiny little piece of cotton chaos orchestrated by her slumbering hands.

As he's learned over the last two nights, however, it's another thing entirely to witness this destruction from  _inside_  the bed.

He's been hit in the face, elbowed in the ribs, groped, kicked, licked, smothered, mumbled at, and pinpointed the exact color of Rose's nipples down to a Crayola offering from the year 2088.

Their next stop after Stepford is to buy a box of those crayons.

But first, they need to finish here. Politely speaking, they should stay for the time they were invited, leaving no later, no earlier, and maybe, somehow, gifting a casserole as thanks.

He's not often one to abide by 'politely speaking' though, and if Rose is amendable, he's keen to leave tonight after the theatre.

That revelation, that he was ready to go, came around 3 a.m., Rose's hand fluttering softly over the front of his pants, and he wanted to wake her up, or he wanted to be in his own bed, still with her, he wanted a soundproof TARDIS, and infinite time, and he wanted it all  _now_.

He'd told her earlier they would stay though, and he doesn't want her to think this new desire to leave is anything to do with her.

Or, well, it's  _entirely_  to do with her, and all the things he wants to do to her off of Stepford.

This leaving, it's not about running from her, it's about running  _to_  her, and now he has to tell her.

Evidence suggests she should've gotten up fifteen minutes ago. There'd been a change in her breathing, her heartbeat, the movement of her eyes underneath her lids — Rose was awake, it was empirically supported, she just ... wasn't  _up_.

So that's down to him then — unwind himself from around Rose's body, pull himself away from soft, warm skin, and spicy, sweet smell, and leave the bed. She'll follow, he knows. He just has to make himself do it.

Five more minutes.

&&.

It takes an hour, but they're finally presentable for breakfast in Catie's kitchen. Quick, regrettably separate showers, teeth brushed, hair combed, dressed and ready for the day.

Or ready for the eight minutes of furious snogging they did pressed up against the wall next to the door to their room, and  _then_  ready for the day.

Breakfast is relegated to sitting at stools in front of the kitchen island, the food lukewarm and presented with an embarrassed apology from Catie. She'd apparently had "something of a handful" in Caleb's behavior that morning and didn't have time to keep the food hot or make a second meal or some other alternative the Doctor ignores hearing in favor of playing lateral footsie with Rose seated next to him.

She's got on jeans and a t-shirt, easily the most casually dressed person in the entire town save for the children, and while Catie had raised her eyebrows at the outfit (and fiddled deliberately with the buttons on her own cuff), the Doctor thinks it looks brilliant.

Dressed like she is, in a house that — while not bigger on the inside — is admittedly lovely, it's only a tiny little tumble for his brain to imagine some sort of domestic life for him and Rose. It's not what he wants, and not what she wants ( ... hopefully), but the thought of it, that they could live their days out side by side, isn't exactly the absolute worst thing he can think of.

Although any situation where they have the  _family_  part of familial bliss would require that they actually do something that could create one. Fluids and orgasms and breathy, pleading noises and they still haven't managed to line up tab B into slot A, as it were.

(It would likely also require significant scientific testing and tinkering, and it's not on the roadmap,  _at all_ , he just — he really wants to sleep with Rose, it's compromising all logical thought, every spare, passing impulse all feeding up and up and up into a cycle of sex and Rose and sex and Rose. He's every cliche about blokes blown wide and translated into Gallifreyan, he knows.)

It's enough to make him lose sight of his own breakfast, instead focusing on the way Rose licks syrup from her lips, the way she closes her eyes and really,  _really_  enjoys that last sip of orange juice, throat muscles working and swallowing and, oh god, he is  _gone_.

Unfortunately this means his eggs miss his mouth, splattering wetly on the leg of his trousers and causing Catie to shriek like he just set the kitchen on fire, instead of making a tiny mess.

Before he can even clear the eggs from the fabric, Catie has swiveled him around on the stool ( — and how did he not notice they were the turn-y kind? A true testament to Rose's powers of captivation if ever there were one — ) and begun expertly removing the mess, one hand following the other, blotting and stain cleaner and, oh,  _ **oh!**_ Her hands, her hands, her hands, no, no, no, not there, not  _there_.

He muffles a shriek, squirming back and away from her probing fingers as Rose goes red-faced with laughter next to him.

"Oh, all right," Catie says, pulling back from her attack. "But you better deal with that before it sets. I trust you can handle it on your own? Rose and I are due for mani/pedis in half an hour."

Rose's snickering stops abruptly. "We are?"

Catie nods. "Of course. I couldn't possibly attend the theatre with my cuticles looking like this," she says, displaying what appears to be an already perfect manicure.

He watches as Rose casts a quick, embarrassed glance at her own nails.

"Oh. Uh. Right," she says. "Sounds great."

"Anyway," Catie continues, oblivious to Rose's tone, "we should be leaving now. Doctor, Tate will be by after work to take you for drinks before dinner."

Catie leans over to Rose conspiratorially. "It's to get them out of the way while we get ready. Well, while we get dressed — hair and make up will be taken care of back at the salon after lunch, of course."

Rose nods in agreement and he feels himself do the same, even though he doesn't feel like agreeing at all. Because it sounds like he's going to spend the day without Rose. It sounds like Rose is going to spend her day being primped and pampered and packaged, and he's going to spend it — getting eggs out of his trousers? Sitting around? It's not ideal, whatever it is.

Before he can put all that into words, Rose is being hustled out the door, Catie on her heels, and he's left in an empty house, with an egg stain.

&&.

He makes it exactly 84 minutes before it becomes unbearable to stay in the house any longer.

There's a bicycle and a skateboard in the garage and he tries them both out in the street, doing little circuits that make one of the neighbors continually peer out her blinds at him.

He's ultimately too large for the former — his knees nearly up to his chin on the Caleb-sized bike — and  _slightly_  too uncoordinated for the skateboard.

(Well, presently, but he's going to add it to his to-do list, maybe get the TARDIS to build him a half-pipe, maybe pop back to the '90s in America, get an up-and-coming Tony Hawk to show him a thing or two. It's a point of pride now, a little board with four wheels isn't going to beat him.)

Which leaves walking or ... getting creative.

With a glance at the neighbor's window to make sure she's done watching, he uses the sonic on an SUV parked down the street, and then he's off to the races. Or the beauty salon.

It only takes about half an hour to realize he hasn't got a clue where he's going. The sat nav had helpfully provided more than 20 possible salons and after making his way to three of them and not finding Rose, he realizes he needs to change tacts.

There's the TARDIS, of course, but that would require driving all the way back to the other side of town and there might be — shudder to think it —  _traffic_.

No, no, much easier just to get Rose to tell him where she is.

He spends another fifteen minutes driving around, looking for a pay phone, and when it proves fruitless, he empties all of his pockets, scraping together enough money for a very basic mobile.

Idling in the parking lot of a donut shop, he texts Rose.

_Where are you?_

Rose replies so quickly, he doesn't even have time to flip radio stations, which is a shame, because if hears "Pleasant Valley Sunday" any longer, he's going to go absolutely mental.

**Who is this?**

Oh, right. She wouldn't have this number.

_It's the Doctor._

Again her reply comes almost immediately.

**Whose phone is that?**

_Mine._

**Where did you get it?**

_I bought it._

**For a second I thought you might have stolen it.**

He pauses, eyes fixing on a woman carrying several pink boxes presumably full of donuts to her car. Do they put ball bearings on donuts? That would be spectacular.

_No, I specifically did not steal this phone._

**Why specifically?**

_What?_

**Why specially did you not steal the phone? Did you steal something else?**

He's a little bit caught out, maybe, possibly, and his phone goes off again as he slouches in the driver's seat.

**Doctor?**

**Doctor, what did you steal?**

With a sigh, he types back.

_A car._

Her reply this time comes the quickest yet.

**A CAR**

_You didn't use any punctuation, was that a question?_

**What did you steal a car for?**

_To get to you, although I'm at a donut shop now. Do you want a donut?_

**I gotta go, Catie's giving me the evil eye.**

_WAIT WHERE ARE YOU_

There's no reply.

He buys a donut.

It does not have ball bearings.

&&.  

There's a pleasant, faint buzzing happening in his lap and before he opens his eyes, he runs through possible sources.

His first thought is the sonic — wouldn't be the first time he'd sleep-sonicked something.

But no, it's a different sort of buzz than the sonic.

His next thought — one that guiltily belies what he'd been dreaming about — is Rose's vibrator, the one they both pretend he doesn't know she has, like he just  _happens_  to keep 21st century batteries in the junk drawer in the galley because their paltry, limited power is so useful.

But he rules that out, too, because the buzz, the vibration, is intermittent  and if he's learned anything about Rose over the last week, it's that she needs a building consistency in the, uh, bedroom.

His final thought is of a mobile phone, and it's that one that gets his eyes open, because that's  _exactly_  what it is — a mobile,  _his_  mobile, and Rose is calling.

He scrambles for the phone in his lap, punching fingers at the screen until it turns on.

"Hello?"

"Doctor! Where are you?"

He blinks a few times, focusing on the light beyond the car windows, the way the sun is just beginning to set.

"Um, a parking lot."

"What? Why?"

"I was ... having a kip."

There's powdered sugar on his trousers and an empty pink box on the seat next to him — a sugar crash he hadn't bothered fighting off.

The interior of the car is nicer than hotel accommodations in easily at least 30 percent of the galaxy, and besides, Rose was  _busy_ , and he's more than 900 years old, can't an old man take a nap every once in a while? Rose herself falls asleep in the jump-seat in the console room at least once a week, and there's plenty of things more exciting than sleep in  _there_ , why is it that —

"Ooookay," Rose says, interrupting his train of thought. "Well, wherever you are, it's not where Catie wants you to be. You're missing drinks with Tate, dinner's in 15 minutes."

It's such a short, small sentence to encompass so much stifling domesticity, and it reminds him again how keen he is to leave this planet and reconvene his  _undomestic_  life with Rose.

But with snogging.

And more than snogging.

"All right, so tell me where dinner is, I'll meet you there," he says.

"Doctor."

"What?"

"You can't drive a stolen car to dinner."

"Fine," he says. "I will  _walk_."

Rose whooshes out a breath that crackles down the mobile, but relents and gives him the address.

A few minutes later, he's cleaned up the donut mess from his trousers and the car, re-sonicked the locks, and is on a whistling, twilight jaunt the four blocks to the restaurant.

&&.

Dinner is uneventful clear through to dessert; in their time here, they've already become mostly immune to judging looks and condescending asides.

The Doctor eats too many rolls, and Rose orders the wrong wine.

Then the police arrive and take the Doctor to jail for, "borrowing a car without the owner's permission."

Business as usual mostly, except that now Rose is presumably at the theatre and he's in a jail cell.

It's not a bad cell, as these things go. Like everything in Stepford, it's clean and new-looking, more reminiscent of a hotel room than a place for forced confinement. There's not even anyone guarding him beyond the locked door — literally  _every_  adult is at the theatre except for him.

And that's the length of his sentence: the play.

For actual citizens of Stepford — Stepfordians? Stepfordites? — it's actually sort of clever. They'd be left out every time someone mentions the lead actress or the musical number in the second act, which would be horrifying for someone like Catie.

For the Doctor, it's just an inconvenience, but only because Rose is there and he's here.

With a sigh, he stretches out on the bed centered perfectly against the back wall of the room, taking a second to pluck the chocolate from the pillow and pop it into his mouth.

He'd tried the door, several times, with several sonic settings, and it's not quite deadlocked, but it's something annoying. By the time he got it open, the play would be over, so really there's no point. He'll just...wait out the clock.

With a flick of the sonic, he rubberizes one of the decorative glass balls arranged in a vase on the bedside table, and then lies down so that his feet are propped up against the wall.

He plays a few games of his own making —

_Bounce the ball on the wall using only his left hand_

_Bounce the ball on the wall using only his right hand_

_Bounce the ball on the wall with his eyes closed_

— and briefly considers having a go at turning the room into a squash court before looking for something else to do.

There's a television, but not a single program is being broadcast. Instead each channel displays a static image of the empty Stepford Theatre, a vaguely ominous reminder to everyone that they've got somewhere they ought to be right now.

The picture shows that the theatre's seats are red — almost the exact red of the dress Rose is wearing tonight, the one she brought from the TARDIS that matches her lipstick. It's so low-cut that he's confident Catie tried to talk her out of it, and he's never been more grateful for Rose's stubborn streak.

Her hair had been down, too, which was surprising, considering he'd had to spend  _ages_  on his own today while she got it done, but he had to admit — it looked lovely.

_She_  looked lovely.

In fact...if he spends a few more minutes thinking about  _how_  lovely, he might be able to come up with a better way to pass the time...there's the soft curves of her breasts...the long lines of her throat...her pink,  _wet_  tongue...

No.

_No_.

He goes back to bouncing his ball, in the non-euphemism sense.

&&. 

His emotional acceptance speech for the Ball Bouncer of the Universe award — the Ballers, naturally — is nearing its end when the mobile in his pocket rings. 

With an apologetic look to the audience of sofa cushions, he fishes the phone out. 

"Hello?" 

"Doctor!" Rose says, her voice vibrating slightly, like she’s walking. “How’s the clink?”

He flops backward on to the bed, staring at the ceiling. “Downright luxurious.”

“I’d expect nothing less from this town,” she snorts, “surprised it didn’t come with a butler.”

“Nah,” he says, “just a few sofa cushions that appreciate the fine art of ball bouncing.”

“What?”

“Nothing, never mind, how’s the  _theatre_?,” he says, drawing the word out, posh and haughty.

“On intermission.” 

The  _click-click-click_  of her heels becomes recognizable in the background, she’s definitely walking somewhere. 

“Concessions?” 

“Hm?”

“On your way to concessions?” If he knows Rose Tyler, and he does — he really, really does,  _nearly_  biblically —  _almost_  biblically — in the very immediate vicinity of biblically — then she’s going for something sour and gummy, and for popcorn she’s going to insist she doesn’t really want, and then eat half of anyway. 

“Yep,” she chirps. “I’m definitely on way to get a treat.”

“Aw, well, that’s great, then,” he says. “You’ve earned it, sorry about this week.”

“What? No, nothing to be sorry for, Doctor. This has been a laugh. Imagine us, in a house, in a town like this, playing  _tennis_  —”

“Oi, I’m actually quite good at tennis, I —“

“Of course you are, you’re quite good at everything, but I meant…this isn’t ever going to be our life, so it’s fun to pretend. It’s like a game, like when you were little.”

“Well, you’re right, I am quite good at everything,” he sniffs. “But being stuck under  _Catie’s_  roof, having to pretend you’re married to a 900-year-old alien? This can’t be your idea of a good time.”

“Really? What do you think I’m here for? This is  _exactly_  my idea of a good time.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah! You should know that by now, and let me tell you  — some of the…ehm…changes to the routine of me and that alien while we were stuck here? That’s  _definitely_  my idea of a good time.”

“Oh, do tell,” he says. “What changes would those be?”

They’ve talked about the…sort of…emotional…stuff, but — outside of the moments in and around the act — they haven’t talked much about the sex stuff. 

Although, if he plays this right, this doesn’t have to be  _talking_  about it either, this can be one of those 'around the act' things. 

A precursor. 

An appetizer. 

“I think you should tell me about them, these  _changes_  with your alien,” he says, before she can answer. “Tell me about them in  _detail_.”

“Really, Doctor? You wanna do this?” She sounds amused, but there’s something underneath it, something with heat. 

“Oh, yes.”

“All right.” She clears her throat a little, and he can picture her steeling herself. “My favorite change is that…”

“Go on.” He makes himself comfortable on the bed, scooting up toward the pillows. 

“…I get to see his cock now.” 

She says it so sexy, so slow, and inside in his trousers, that very organ pulses to life, blood rushing in his ears as his cock stiffens and swells.

“It’s such a nice shape, not too long, nowhere  _near_  too short, it’s so thick, and it gets  _so_  hard, oh god, and the way it  _tastes_  —”

He is rapidly losing his grip on everything, about two seconds away from having a wank right here in this prison cell with Rose Tyler on the phone. 

“Enough! Oh god,  _enough_ , I wanna do it the other way,” he says, pleading. 

“What?”

“I wanna do it the other way humans do this, the way where we tell what we’d do to each other.”

“Oh, um. Yeah, all right…yeah, let’s do that way.”

“Brilliant, I’ll start,” he says. He’s already beginning to feel a little more in control. Talking about the things he wants to do to Rose Tyler has never been a problem, at least inside his own head. It’s the  _listening_  to Rose Tyler talk about this sort of thing that’s proving to be trouble. 

“I would start by kissing you," he says, barreling right in. "Rose, I've wanted to kiss you for so long, in so many places. Your lips, your breasts, the small of your back, between your legs..."

"Yeah?"

" _Yes_. But I'd start with your mouth, kiss you nice and slow, feel that teasing little tongue of yours against mine."

He hears a whoosh of breath and a dull, muted thud, like she's slumped herself against a wall. 

"Wait," he says, and the little whine she gives in response makes him grin. "Where are you?"

"I'm in a hallway, it's empty." 

"How empty?"

"Completely."

"Brilliant." He presses his palm against the front of his trousers, shifting his cock so it's not pressing against his zip. It doesn't help, but he leaves his hand there anyway. "So...your breasts."

"What about them?"

"That's where I'd go next, pull that dress down, wouldn't take much, and you can't be wearing a bra, so it'd be right to it, soft, perfect handfuls topped off by the most beautiful shade of Mavdorian Sunset —"

"What?"

"The crayon? Oh, did I not mention that yet? Forget it, forget it, moving on — your nipples. Obviously I'd suck on those."

Rose moans. It's cut off and choked back, but it's a definite moan, and he undoes the button of his trousers, lowering the zip carefully as he considers his next words. 

"Haven't had a chance to experiment much though, do you like a little bit of teeth? Or more of a softer touch?"

"T...teeth."

"Teeth it is then," he says. "I bet your hips would start moving next, arching up, looking for me. Would you be wet, Rose?  _Are_  you wet?"

"Yeah." Her voice is so strangled and breathy that he doesn't even bother with his pants, just shoves his hand under the waistband to grip his cock. 

"How wet? Wet enough to hitch that dress up and take care of yourself?"

"You first."

"Oh, Rose, I'm way ahead of you."

She sucks in a breath. "Are you  _wanking_ , Doctor?"

He glides his hand up and down his shaft a few times, tightening his grip before tucking the phone between his ear and shoulder and using his free hand to shove his pants down and out of the way. 

"I might be."

"Really? Do you do that on the TARDIS?"

"I might do."

The rhythm of his hand is steady, unhurried, images of the past few days fluttering in his mind's eye as Rose's voice fills his ear. 

"Take your hand off your cock, Doctor."

His hand stalls, the world tipping a little. "What?"

"Take your hand off your cock," she says again, slowly. "And open the door."

There's a  _click!_  across the room, the lock releasing, and he's up off the bed like a shot, phone tumbling to the floor. 

He rips the door open, revealing the sight of Rose with a pass key pinched between her fingers. 

"What? How?" 

She licks her lips, still painted up in that fuck-me red, and drops her gaze to his cock, bobbing stupidly from the front of his open trousers. 

"Do you really want to know  _now_? Because I have to tell you, it's kind of a long story..."

He waves her off. "Nope, nope, you did it, great job, molto bene, oh, fuck it —" 

Sliding his hand along her cheek, he pulls her to him, bringing their mouths together with no regard for his earlier promise of nice and slow. 

Her tongue slips briefly past his lips, teasing, and he chases it back, pulling her more fully into the room and slamming the door shut with his free hand. 

She propels him backward toward the bed, and when the backs of his knees hit the mattress, she takes a step away. 

"Go on," she says, nodding toward the head of the bed. 

He complies, shifting slowly up the duvet until he's propped up against the pillows. 

Rose stays at the foot of the bed, eyes fixed on his erection, and then she moves her hands to her side, fiddling with her zip.

When she gets it down, she shimmies and the dress falls to the floor. He'd been right — no bra — and she stands in front of him in lacy black knickers that aren't even scandalously cut, they're just  _lacy, black knickers_ , and Rose is wearing them. That's the important part. 

He groans as she steps out of her heels and the fabric puddle the dress has made. "Rose Tyler, are you seducing me?"

"Not at all," she says. "You started this...talking about sucking on my nipples...asking me if I was wet."

"And are you?"

"Think I told you I was, probably could've used the word  _dripping_ , but then...you probably want to find out for yourself, don't you?"

"Nothing could stop me."

"Prove it," she says, and he doesn't know if the echo is deliberate, the same words she'd used at the start of all this, days ago, baiting him into kissing her. 

He shifts off the bed, urging her into his vacated spot, as he rushes to get his clothes off. 

Rose is watching him, he can see her eyes tracking every movement of his fingers, watching every bit of skin as it's revealed, and he tries to slow himself down, make it better for her, but then she slips her hand into her knickers and he fucking  _hears_  her,  _hears_  how wet she is, and the rest of his clothes are tugged off as fast as possible. 

Her legs are spread, writhing a little with the rhythm of her fingers, and he positions his body between them, bouncing onto the bed and bracing himself above her with his hands. 

He looks down their bodies to where she's touching herself. 

"Move your hand," he says, and she deliberately  _pushes_ , arching her back as her fingers move deeper inside of her. 

"Like that?" she says, pumping slowly. 

"No. Move your hand  _out of my way_."

She raises her eyebrows, but does as directed, pulling her hand from her knickers. He catches her around the wrist quickly, pinning her hand to the mattress. 

"Keep it there." He's not entirely sure she's going to let this go, and he waits a beat to see if she'll protest. 

"Okay?"

She meets his eye. "Yeah."

"Good."

He drops a fast kiss to her mouth, pressing his tongue into her mouth quickly, and then retreating to press his lips against her neck, her collarbone, her breasts. 

Running his tongue around her nipple, he sucks briefly, before grazing the edges with his teeth, tugging lightly, in a way that sets her hips bucking just like he'd hoped. 

He switches to the other breast, letting his hand take over on the one he's abandoned, and soon she's writhing underneath him, hot, needy,  _pleading_  sounds running from her mouth to wrap around his cock. 

There’s something else he wants wrapped around his cock though, something he’s wanted for days, week, months,  _bodies_ , and he gives her breast one last kiss before slipping further down her torso. 

He drops a few nipping kisses as he goes, the bottom edge of her ribcage, the smooth, soft expanse of her stomach, the subtle ridges of her hipbones, and then he’s peeling her knickers down her legs. The fabric is rough and damp against the pads of his fingers, and when he gets them off, he’s struck with the impulse to put them in his mouth, before realizing he can put  _her_  there instead. 

 Settling himself lower, he grips the insides of her thighs, spreading her legs. 

“Oh, fuck,” she says, realizing what he’s about to do, and her next word comes out on a hiss perfectly timed to the first swipe of his tongue. “ _Yes_.”

There’s going to be time for slow, there’s going to be time for teasing her and drawing this out until she’s pleading with him,  _begging_ , but right now his cock is twitching against what is likely a very expensive prison duvet, leaking pre-come and staining the floral print. 

So, instead, he gets on with it.

In his limited experience with Rose’s preferences, he’s cobbled together a theoretical study guide, a likely priority list — steady, rapid, pressure on her clit, a finger or two with a matched rhythm — and he builds to it quickly, cannoning her ahead faster and faster until she’s tugging at his hair with one hand and erratically moving the other, pulling at her nipples, the blankets, covering her mouth. 

He slips a hand free and she makes a grab for it, clenching his fingers so tightly that he nearly falters. She’s keening above him, panting, moaning, and then, just as her grip is hard enough to be painful, she goes silent for one long moment…and then she screams.

Her back arches up off the bed, and the noises, oh, fuck, the  _noises_ , broken curses, and primitive sounds, and he works her through all of it, his fingers steadily moving, his tongue pressing insistently. It seems to go on for ages, suspended, and then suddenly she’s writhing away, using both her hands in his hair to push and tug him away.

“Okay, okay, oh, god, enough, too much,” she pants, and he pulls back, licking his lips quickly before wiping them on the inside of her thigh. 

“Yeah?” he says, moving to kneel between her legs as he grins down at her. 

“Sod off, you know you’re good at that.”

“Do I…?” He pitches his voice high, tipping his head from side to side as he fishes for a compliment.

“Fine, like I said last time, that was amazing.”

“Ah, thanks.” He moves to straighten a tie he isn’t actually wearing any more, and instead scratches his hand across his chest. 

“Doctor?” Her hand moves to grip his cock, stroking almost idly. 

“Hm?”

She tightens her grip. “Fuck me.” 

He moves quickly, dropping down to brace himself on one elbow while his other hand replaces hers on his cock, guiding himself into position. 

When he pauses for a moment, just one. bloody. second, just to mark the occasion, Rose grabs his arse and  _pulls_ , bringing him deep in one smooth stroke. 

“ _Ohhhhh_.” He drops his forehead on the pillow behind her head, steeling himself, because he is  _inside_  Rose Tyler, and she’s —

“Fuck, you’re so  _warm_ , and you’re so wet, and —“

“ _Move_ , Doctor.” She wraps her legs around his waist, arching her hips up into him, and looping her arms under his. Then her hands are everywhere, encouraging him, his back, his shoulders, his arse again, scratching touches and grabbing touches, and her mouth, oh,  _god_ , how did he forget about her  _mouth_? 

She’s found his neck and found her teeth, and he bucks in response, quickly, and it feels so good, so absolutely fucking brilliant, that he does it again, harder, and again, and again, until he’s thrusting into her with artless grunts that she answers, each time, she  _answers_ , groaning, and biting, and licking and his cock is being squeezed so perfectly, wet, hot pressure, and friction, blimey, the  _friction_  and the smell and the sound and Rose, Rose, Rose, he wants to come, he wants to explode inside of her, fill her up, but her first, her first, her first,

**Rose**.

“Come,  _please_ ,” and she listens, by some miraculous miracle of miracles, she  _listens_ , nearly howling underneath him as her arms and legs and  _everything_  clench tight around him, keeping him in place. 

It’s enough to take the edge off, and when he restarts his rhythm, he thinks maybe he can get her there again, maybe he can give her one more, but then she starts talking, starts instigating.

“Oh, fuck, Doctor, you feel so good, this feels so good, you’re so hard, god, I’ve wanted this, it feels  _so_  good, that’s it, fuck me, yeah, yes, yes, yes, come, Doctor, I want to feel you come, your turn, yeah, that’s it, that’s it.”

She’s scratching her nails up and down his back, swiping her tongue against the sweat on his jaw, nipping his earlobe, and talking, still  _talking_. 

All his blood seems to tingle in his veins, higher, higher, higher, until — 

He plummets forward, plunging deep once more as he spills himself inside of her, pulsing waves she milks him through, murmuring softly, words he can’t make out, as her hand moves to smooth his back over the marks she’s made. 

When he comes back to himself, he goes to move, tries to roll off of her, but she refuses, tightening her limbs again.

“Just…for a second. Just stay here for a second.”

“But…?”

“Just stay.”

Too exhausted to argue, he lets his weight settle on her, burying his face in her neck as she strokes the back of his hair. 

It takes a few minutes to move, but he eventually does, Rose groaning when he finally pulls out and away. He flops onto his back beside her and she moves to lay on his chest, settling her hand over one of his hearts. 

He can see the ring she’s been wearing all week on her finger, can suddenly pick out the pressure of his own where his hand rests wrapped around her shoulder. 

“I think this counts as a conjugal visit,” he says. “Never had one of those before.”

She laughs, her breath ghosting across his skin, but before she can respond, the room is engulfed in “Flight of the Bumblebee.”

Rose jumps away from him and out of the bed entirely, poised by the side of the mattress in a defensive stance, except…naked. 

“What is  _that_?”

He shrugs, pushing himself up. “Alarm system, I imagine — bit more pleasant than the usual horns and sirens.”

“Oh, of course,” Rose says, picking up her knickers and pulling them back on. “Wouldn’t want to ruin the ambiance of a  _prison break_.”

“Is that what this is? You should’ve said, would’ve skipped over that bit with my tongue, saved us some time.”

His trousers hit him square in the face. 

&&.

The run back to the TARDIS is surprisingly uneventful — they don’t encounter a single person. Rose explains she really had left at intermission, after nicking the card off of Cathy’s husband, the apparent sheriff. 

He assumes they’re all still back at the theatre, arguing over who will come check on the inmate and miss the final act. He has a feeling the answer will end up being  _no one_ , but he hustles Rose through the door of the TARDIS anyway, before sending them into the vortex. 

She sits on the jump-seat, watching him work, and when he catches sight of that ring on her finger again, he tuts at himself. 

“I didn’t even carry you over the threshold,” he says. “First time in our home as a married couple and I’ve already broken tradition.”

Rose laughs, pushing herself up and crossing the grating toward him. When she stands in front of him, she pulls her ring off, depositing it in his hand. 

“Oh, troublemakers like us?” she says. “You’ll probably have to marry me again someday.”

He tightens his fist around the ring, the metal still warm from being pressed against her skin.

“Yeah,” he says. “I think I might.”


End file.
